Hello everyone
This is partly an access issue and partly a licensing issue, but I wondered if anyone had any thoughts on it!
We used to subscribe to a number of journals from a publisher (let's call them 'X') who did not require us to sign a licence agreement but who provided access to their e-content based on a terms and conditions agreement that could be found on their website, and which stated that:
"On termination of this License, the Publisher shall provide continuing access for Authorised Users to that part of the Licensed Materials which was published and paid for within the Subscription Period except where such termination is due to a breach of the License by the Licensee which the Licensee has failed to remedy as provided in 10.1.1 and 10.1.3 of this License. (Please note this clause may not apply to individual members of certain Learned Societies for whom the Publisher produces and distributes journals.)"
It's a clause we are very used to seeing, and that's absolutely fine; if we have paid for something, we should retain access to it.
We've noticed over the past year or so that many of these titles where we have a restricted number of years' access, that we paid for under subscription, have been switched off, sometimes on platform migrations. In many cases we are talking about more than six years since cancellation, so our records (since changing LMS) do not go back that far, and neither do those of our subscription agent. We do have print copies on the shelves which cover part of the years for which we had e-access (but not all, as we offered some journal volumes to UKRR because we had them covered in e-access).
The publisher will not switch back on the access for us without some confirmation that we subscribed to the content in question. As we never had a licence stipulating we were entitled to the access which we can produce with a signature we cannot prove entitlement through that route. It doesn't help either that X have changed their pricing policy several times from allowing free e-access with a print subscription to now having print + paid online or online only options.
One piece of advice I received was to scan the print journal covers we had to prove we have them in our collection, but this of course only proves ownership, not purchase!
It has always seemed to me that this is one major downside of the e-journal rental model - when we purchased print content the publisher did not come along years after the event and remove the volumes from our stock, but it does happen on quite a regular basis that we have to fight to retain the e-content for which we have paid.
Initiatives such as KB+ don't help as they are also time-limited, and also impact on what is made available through commercial knowledge bases such as SFX or Serials Solutions.
Has anyone else tried to tackle this, and is it indeed something we should be concerned about as a community?
Many thanks
Louise
Louise Cole
Senior Information Advisor
Information Services (Education)
Kingston University
Kingston upon Thames
KT2 7LB
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