Hi,

It's been another one of those weeks, yesterday we uncovered that our
institutional access to the Scientific American Online Archive had been
terminated at some time (still unknown), today I uncovered the fact that we
had lost institutional access to Science Online.

On the 10th June 2002 I received an email from the AAAS warning myself as
the Science Online Subscription Administrator that our Science Online
subscription was due to expire on the 5th July 2002. Having recently signed
the invoice for payment I immediately replied to the email stating that the
payment was on its way and asking for our access to Science Online not to be
removed. I later sent another email giving more specific information (the
original invoice was incorrectly addressed so we had to ask for another
invoice which was faxed from the States, unfortunately the payment details
we needed on the fax were unreadable, so we had to get the details again
from the States in order that we could pay the invoice) and asking the AAAS
to confirm that they had received our payment.

To be honest I had forgotten all about this problem (there were many more
problems to take it's place, so other publishers on this list shouldn't be
too smug that this doesn't happen to their subscribers) and assumed that not
having heard any more from Science Online that everything was in order. How
wrong I was!

Again by pure chance this afternoon (maybe because of my experience with
uncovering our loss of online access to the Scientific American Online
Archive yesterday) I just happened to access the Science Online site to find
that our access to the full text had indeed been terminated a couple of days
ago. I immediately contacted the the AAAS to find:

1. they still had no any record of our payment made by ourselves
2. they had no record of the emails I sent in response to the warning back
in June that payment had not been received.

Having explained the situation, again no fault of ours, our access was
immediately reinstated. I have now found out that we made payment on the
30th May 2002 by bank transfer, but somehow the AAAS don't appear to know
this. In the meantime we will continue to have access to Science Online, at
least until same time next year.

There are both positive and negative features of this incident:

1. I was given adequate warning of an impending problem with this key
science journal which I appreciated - positive and a good model for other
publishers to follow
2. My email responses to the original emails don't appear to have been
received and recorded - negative, which is why picking up a phone and
speaking directly to someone is often the only way to get things sorted
straightaway, but intensive of staff time
3. No warning of actual termination of accesss - if the AAAS could give me a
months warning that our access was going to be terminated why could their
system not send me an email to say that our access had been removed or was
about to be removed - negative, but should be considered as an additional
safety mechanism by the AAAS
4. We made payment on the 30th May 2002 by bank transfer - negative - what
has happened to our payment?, it had all the details needed to tie it in
with our Science Online subscription, including our AAAS number. Is this a
case of one department not fully communicating with another department in
the same organisation??

At least our access is sorted, but once again the fickle nature of many
individual institutional online subscriptions remains a key concern,
especially as many of us are proceeding with the move to online only and
will not have recourse to a print copy. We need to have faith that those
subscriptions we pay for we actually have access to, otherwise we might as
well throw our money to the wind!

Cheers
Lesley


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lesley Crawshaw, Faculty Information Consultant
Learning and Information Services,
University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, AL10 9AB UK
                  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
phone:  01707 284662      fax: 01707 284666
web: http://www.herts.ac.uk/lis/subjects/natsci/ejournal/
list owner: [log in to unmask]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~