Ian (and others),
This is a response to a number of the points that have been raised over
the last couple of days about the ingentaJournals service.
The issues seem to fall into two broad areas, namely those originally
raised by Ian with regard to missing issues and articles, and those
mentioned by Louise Cole, among others, concerning continuity of access
especially at renewal time.
It should be stated at the outset that, as an intermediary, ingenta is
keen to provide as high a level of service as possible to both
publishers and subscribers. The service has grown rapidly over a short
space of time and we already have over 2700 journal titles from 44
publishers online now, with many more in the pipeline. By providing
'portal' access to a rich collection of material from many publishers,
and supplying tools for searching or browsing by specific topic or broad
subject area, we believe we give a valuable service to the research
community.
For publishers where ingenta hosts the full text, material is supplied
to us either issue-by-issue or article-by-article (depending on the
publisher). If an article from a complete issue fails to load correctly
(for whatever reason), the whole load is aborted and the problem is
referred back to the publisher. Where the feed is article-by-article, we
can only refer back individual problem articles, and the service may
present an issue with only some articles loaded.
When ingentaJournals was first launched, checking for this sort of
consistency and correctness was a relatively straightforward task. As
the service has grown, it has become increasingly difficult to monitor.
We have now got to the point where we need a set of tools, tailored to
the different procedures in place for various publishers, to
automatically check for such things as missing issues, missing articles
etc. so they can be quickly investigated.
We anticipate implementing such a toolkit later this year, following the
launch of the new combined UnCover/ingenta service (due after Easter).
Such a toolkit could also help monitor such things as late arrival of
subscription information from publishers at the beginning of a new
subscription year.
In the meantime, please don't hesitate to contact the ingenta helpdesk
if you or your users discover missing issues or other inconsistencies in
the material you should have access to.
Terry
===========================================
Terry Morrow Tel: +44 1225 826277
Head of BIDS Fax: +44 1225 826283
ingenta UK ltd
University of Bath http://www.bids.ac.uk
Bath, BA2 7AY, UK http://www.ingenta.com
===========================================
On Tue, 30 Jan 2001, Ian Winship wrote:
> We are finding many gaps in coverage of the titles we access through
> ingentaJournals where complete issues or sometimes just certain articles are
> not available. This is very frustrating for our users, especially as in many
> cases, for example MCB and Academic Press, we can subsequently find these
> issues and articles on the publisher's site.
>
> What is the reason?
>
> [I am posting to the list, rather than asking ingenta direct, as I assume
> other list members will be interested in any response and will be happy to
> help if ingenta need to apply pressure on their suppliers.]
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Ian Winship
> Learning Resources, University of Northumbria at Newcastle
> City Campus Library, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST, UK
> ----------------
> e-mail: [log in to unmask]
> phone: 0191 227 4150 fax: 0191 227 4563
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
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