Today's important announcement to the higher education committee may be of
interest to list members.
All comments are welcome.
Gary Horrocks
UKOLUG Committee (JIBS User Group Liaison)
>Important Announcement for all UKHE students, staff, libraries,
>and information services
>
>(apologies for cross-posting, but please forward to all
>appropriate lists)
>
>***** Update on Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) Web
>of Science. and the UK Higher Education Community *****
>
>New Information Service
>
>The ISI service, which is currently hosted by BIDS at the
>University of Bath is the most successful and longest running of
>the subscription data services offered by the Joint Information
>Systems Committee (JISC). ISI is used extensively throughout
>the UK Higher Education community in both research and teaching.
>The service has been operational for eight years and the current
>contract expires in March 2000. CHEST has negotiated renewal of
>the contract with ISI, on behalf of JISC, resulting in an offer
>for ISI's new "Web of Science" service.
>
>Following extensive consultation with the user community, and
>fully considering the implications of moving from the ISI
>service to the new ISI Web of Science service, JISC agreed that
>Web of Science should replace the current ISI service.
>
>The Web of Science is ISI's new interface that provides Web
>access to the Science Citation Index ExpandedTM, Social Sciences
>Citation Index., and Arts & Humanities Citation Index. (formerly
>SciSearch, Social SciSearch, and Arts & Humanities Search). It
>will also provide access to ISTP. (Index to Scientific and
>Technical Proceedings). This is the same data provided under the
>current ISI agreement. JCR. (Journal Citation Report) has been
>confirmed as an additional option for Web of Science, and
>discussions are continuing about Reaction CenterTM (part of the
>ISI Chemistry ServerSM) and Derwent Innovations IndexSM.
>
>The new service will be available to all Higher Education
>Institutions funded by HEFCE, SHEFC, HEFCW and DENI together
>with a number of additional sites from the CHEST list. In
>accordance with JISC's agreed policy on banded charging for
>datasets, UK HEIs have been divided into three categories for
>this service. These bands are based on those used for the JSTOR
>service, with the small and very small HEIs combined into a
>single group. All other sites on the CHEST list at
>http://www.chest.ac.uk/chestsites.html will be treated as
>large for the purpose of this service.
>
>The subscription costs for the Web of Science service will be as
>advertised in JISC Circular 16/98 which was sent to all UKHEIs
>in October 1998 (http://www.jisc.ac.uk/pub98/c16_98.html). The
>subscription price of the current BIDS ISI service has to date
>been subsidised by the JISC by approximately #1,500 per site per
>annum. The subscription price of the new Web of Science Service
>in 2000/01 has been set at the same level as the existing
>service although Large sites will see an increase of #1,500
>because the subsidy will disappear. Medium and Small sites will
>see immediate savings of #1,500 and #4,500 respectively. The
>increase in costs and loss of subsidy has been phased to lessen
>the impact on institutions. The Web of Science service will also
>be available to Further Education institutions but the
>subscription prices have not yet been determined.
>
>New Service Provider
>
>As ISI Web of Science is a completely new information service
>requiring a different hardware platform and different support
>from the service provider serving the information to UK higher
>education institutions, JISC followed its normal policy of going
>to tender for service provision. The successful bid came from
>MIDAS at Manchester Computing, University of Manchester who will
>host the ISI Web of Science service. The service will be
>provided by a close collaborative partnership of MIDAS, the John
>Rylands University Library of Manchester (JRULM), and the
>Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) Library.
>
>The University of Manchester has provided high quality computing
>and information services to the UK Higher Education community
>for nearly 30 years, and will be able to mount ISI Web of
>Science alongside the 40 datasets currently hosted at MIDAS.
>These include Beilstein Crossfire, JSTOR, the UK Census and
>COPAC plus a variety of additional strategic research and
>teaching datasets. MIDAS is also very experienced in providing
>training, user support, and large-scale computing resources for
>the UK academic community. This coupled with the extensive
>information and ISI database experience of the JRULM
>and MMU Library is designed to ensure continuing high standards
>of service delivery for UK HE.
>
>The Transition
>
>The ISI Web of Science service at MIDAS will commence in
>September 1999 and the old and new services will overlap until
>July 2000 to allow a period of transition and training of users.
>Sites will be required to pay the new subscription rates with
>effect from 1 April 2000 or thereafter. (This will give current
>subscribers access to both the old and new service). A
>demonstration service comprising five years of data, updated
>weekly, is currently being offered by NISS. Current subscribers
>to ISI can use it at the following WWW address:
>http://wos.niss.ac.uk/>
>
>Through its consultation with users JISC is acutely aware of the
>importance of helping higher education institutions to manage
>this transition period. In addition to support staff based at
>MIDAS, JRULM, and MMU, close discussions are being held with the
>JIBS user group to ensure appropriate additional support is made
>available for this all-critical transition year.
>
>Don't wait until the end of the transition year to begin using
>ISI Web of Science at MIDAS! There are very good reasons to
>begin as soon as possible. First, there is normally a great
>increase in usage of the ISI service at the beginning of the
>academic year. The levels of use anticipated for this September
>and October are too high to be supported by the existing
>hardware platform at BIDS, thus users may be able to access the
>new Web of Science service at MIDAS more
>easily this autumn. Second, ISI has expressed its willingness
>to respond to user feedback about the new Web of Science
>service. The earlier feedback from users can begin to arrive at
>MIDAS, the faster we can feed this information back to ISI.
>
>Finally, JISC would like to join users in thanking BIDS for all
>its hard work in providing an excellent ISI service for the last
>8 years. We look forward to BIDS and MIDAS working together, and
>with the user community, to ensure a smooth transitional period.
>
>Further Information
>
>from JISC (http://www.jisc.ac.uk/):
>Alice Colban, CEI Secretary, [log in to unmask], (0117) 931
>7257
>Alicia Wise, Collections Manager, [log in to unmask], (0171)
>848 2556
>Jane Williams, Head of JISC-Assist, [log in to unmask],
>(0117) 954 6850
>
>from MIDAS (http://www.midas.ac.uk/):
>Julia Chruszcz, Head of National Services, [log in to unmask],
>(0161) 275 6100
>Ross MacIntyre, Project Manager, [log in to unmask], (0161)
>275 7181
>
>from JRULM (http://rylibweb.man.ac.uk/)
>Diana Leitch, Deputy Librarian, [log in to unmask], (0161)
>275 3737
>
>from MMU Library (http://mmu.ac.uk/)
>Gill Barry, Deputy Librarian, [log in to unmask], (0161) 247
>6101
>
>Or see details of the contract with ISI on the CHEST website as
>they become available:
>http://www.chest.ac.uk/datasets/isi-wos/contents.html
>____________________________________________________________
>
>Alicia L. Wise [log in to unmask]
>Collections Manager
>Joint Information Systems Committee
>Information Services & Systems
>King's College London Tel: (0171) 848 2556
>Strand Fax: (0171) 848 1777
>London WC2R 2LS Mobile: (0411) 376 256
>UK
>_____________________________________________________________
>
************************************************
Gary Horrocks
Library Services
Guy's, King's & St. Thomas' Schools of
Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences
Weston Education Centre
Cutcombe Road, London, SE5 9PJ
Tel: 0171 848 5557 Fax: 0171 848 5550
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/medlib
************************************************
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|
