Hi,

I agree with everything that Bernd-Christoph has said. 

What a lot of work and hassle this has caused for all parties involved - and
all for just one/two journals. Every single stage in this changeover of
publishers has been one problem after another. 

We signed and faxed the license re: EMBO Journal/EMBO Reports to the
publisher on the 16th December 2003. The quote for EMBO Journals/EMBO
Reports was forwarded to our agent at the beginning of December 2003. Even
though we told the publisher we were ordering through our agent they still
sent us an invoice, which we then had to get a credit note for. In the
meantime our agent then came back to us saying that we had to negotiate the
quote with the publisher before they could place the order, even though we
had already provided the quote to our agent We were also assured by the
publisher that we would not lose online access to these titles. 

Following Bernd-Christoph's email I checked our full text access to EMBO
Journal/EMBO Reports at Highwire at: http://embojournal.npgjournals.com/ and
http://emboreports.npgjournals.com/ respectively and found that we were
being asked to sign in - a bad sign, especially since the last time I
checked it was working fine.

We can however access these titles at http://www.nature.com/emboj or
http://www.nature.com/embor respectively. I contacted Nature to ask why we
no longer had access via Highwire and was advised to change our links to the
ones above. However, I said we would like these titles to be accessed via
Highwire as well as via the http://www.nature.com site. I understand that
these titles are to be hosted on both platforms so why all these problems?

The following page at: http://emboreports.npgjournals.com/subscriptions/
says "PLEASE NOTE : EMBO reports is hosted on both
http://www.nature.com/emboreports/ and http://emboreports.npgjournals.com/
and you currently have an account set up for both platforms" - if this is
true why don't we have access?

I went to test access to the full text just before sending this message to
the list and lo and behold our access via Highwire now appears to be working
- this is great, but why have I had to go through all this hassle yet again,
finding that access we did have via Highwire had expired, only to find that
our access has been reinstated. 

I then received an email from NPG saying that our access via Highwire for
both titles had been updated. 

That's all right then isn't it?
 
Now I can get back to sorting our all our problems with ScienceDirect!

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]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

-----Original Message-----
From: An informal open list set up by the UK Serials Group
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
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Sent: 10 March 2004 14:07
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: EMBO Journal + EMBO Reports / expired access


[please excuse multiple receipt of this message]

Dear list members, 

although Oxford University Press, the former publisher of EMBO Journal, 
assured us that the grace period at HighWire would be at least three 
months and although I communicated this to NPG and received no clear  
message that the grace period would end earlier, the grace period at 
HighWire apparently has ended on March 9. 

As far as I know there was no communication of that fact by NPG. On 
the HighWire website, for some time there was an entry "(to be 
determined)" in place of the usual back issues policy entry on the 
overview page of free back issues at HighWire. Only very recently, 
there was placed an entry "until March 8" under "free trial period", 
but it was not at all clear that this date would apply also to the 
grace period for former subscribers to EMBO Journal. 

As many of you are aware, the changes in pricing policy for the EMBO 
Journal were announced very late in 2003; to make things worse, no 
pricing table was provided to agencies, but each agency or subscriber 
had to obtain an individual quote for each customer. As a result, 
even today a number of institutions are still without a quote. 

As expected NPG also did not manage to add the EMBO package to all 
institutional accounts (e.g. those within our GASCO EMBO Consortium). 
No wonder that agencies and the NPG office itself is now flooded by 
complaints from libraries that have lost access to EMBO journal. 

I also find it irresponsible that until today I have received no 
answer from either the publisher or the society to the question 
about permanent access to paid content for this journal which was 
guaranteed as long as the journal was published by OUP but is now in 
the limbo as NPG's standard institutional site license does not 
acknowledge such archival rights, cf. my message to liblicense-l and 
lis-e-journals of Feb 18, 2004 (Fwd: RE: EMBO Journal / Archival 
access to paid-for content). It now has happened what was to be 
expected: former subscribers no longer have access to content of 2003 
they paid for. 

OUP supports the guidelines from ALPSP ('When a society journal 
changes publisher', www.alpsp.org/socjourn1.pdf) and told us that 
the issue of archival access to paid-for content ('perpetual access') 
in respect of The EMBO Journal was highlighted during the hand-over
discussions between OUP and NPG, but NPG and EMBO do not seem to care. 

I would suggest that NPG should consider to extend the grace period 
as originally planned (until end of March) and also should comment 
on how they plan to give back access to paid issues of 2003 for all 
former subscribers (the easiest way would be to temporarily switch 
the free back issues policy to the same mode as for EMBO reports i.e. 
to make 2003 open access completely, and reinstate the 12 months 
moving wall from 2005 on). 

In my view, there are many lessons to learn from this transition, which 
was a nightmare in many aspects and we should certainly discuss these 
at the next library advisory board meeting in New York in April. 

Best regards,
Bernd-Christoph Kaemper, GASCO Nature Consortium

--
Bernd-Christoph Kaemper, Dipl.-Physiker, Bibl.-Rat 
Fachreferent für Physik und Koordination elektronischer Ressourcen 
Universitätsbibliothek Stuttgart, Postfach 104941, 70043 Stuttgart 
Tel +49 711 121-3510, Fax +49 711 121-3502, [log in to unmask]