The ASA is doing an educational job but it does apparently take time. We
continue to work towards educating publishers that they have nothing to fear
and everything to gain by gracing their electronic journals. The biggest
fear seems to be that gracing electronic journals might result in later
payments - which is a perfectly reasonable and understandable concern but
one that is not born out in practice. In the print world gracing the first
issue or two of the year is commonplace and yet I am not aware that
publishers who grace their print copies get paid later than those who do
not, either from my experience in publishing or as an agent. The situation
would be no different as far as electronic journals are concerned. Paying on
time is the only way to ensure renewals will be made efficiently. Any
failure here by an agent would be guaranteed to result in that agent losing
business to others who make renewals and timely payment a priority because
libraries are very unlikely to be satisfied with an agent who risks their
subscriptions by paying late. For the agent any gains from later payment are
hugely outweighed by the potential loss of business. So I would challenge
all publishers who do not grace their electronic journals to reconsider this
policy and at the very least enable to agent to deal with authentication and
access wherever possible.
Rollo Turner
Secretary General
Association of Subscription Agents and Intermediaries
10 Lime Avenue
High Wycombe
Bucks HP11 1DP
www.subscription-agents.org
Tel +(0)1494 534778
[log in to unmask]
----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter King" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2004 10:40 AM
Subject: Re: Gracing of Electronic Journal Subscriptions - How Many
Publishers Are Adhering to the ASA's Code of Practice?
> Dear Rollo
>
> The Radiological Society of North America, publisher of "Radiology",
> claims that gracing would cost it "thousands of dollars". I have
> pointed out that not gracing costs it the loss of huge amounts of
> goodwill, but the Society does not seem to be convinced. Perhaps ASA
> needs to do an educational job here, as well as simply "stressing the
> importance" of gracing?
>
> regards
>
> Peter King
> University of Bristol
>
> On Tue, 13 Jan 2004 09:51:13 -0000 Rollo Turner
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > Gracing seems to continue to be a problem with some publishers journals.
The
> > ASA has drawn the attention of publishers representative bodies to this
> > problem and continues to stress the importance of gracing electronic
> > journals to publishers at every opportunity. This has certainly helped
to
> > reduce the scale of the challenge if not to eliminate it. For a number
of
> > (good) reasons many publishers do not wish to publicise their gracing
policy
> > and hence the rather dated look to the list. However increasing numbers
of
> > publishers avoid this problem and many other electronic journal
> > authentication, management and access issues by enabling the agent to
allow
> > authentication and access at the time the renewal is processed by the
agent.
> > This has helped considerably and we hope more publishers will empower
agents
> > in this way.
> >
> > Rollo Turner
> > Secretary General
> > Association of Subscription Agents and Intermediaries
> > 10 Lime Avenue
> > High Wycombe
> > Bucks HP11 1DP
> > www.subscription-agents.org
> > Tel +(0)1494 534778
> > [log in to unmask]
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Lesley Crawshaw" <[log in to unmask]>
> > To: <[log in to unmask]>
> > Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2004 1:29 PM
> > Subject: Gracing of Electronic Journal Subscriptions - How Many
Publishers
> > Are Adhering to the ASA's Code of Practice?
> >
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > Already this year, several emails have arrived informing us that our
> > electronic access to "subscribed" journals has been terminated. These
are
> > all Highwire titles, but at least we get informed that our access has
been
> > terminated for Highwire titles, whereas with many other publishers we
may
> > not even get informed about our loss of access, and will only find out
by
> > our users informing us. At present we have little idea of how many of
our
> > subscriptions are affected by such cutoffs in access.
> >
> > The first batch of subscription status alerts we received from Highwire
were
> > for titles that expired on the 31st December 2003 - they affected the
> > following titles:
> >
> > American Journal of Sports Medicine
> > Mycologia
> > Radiology
> >
> > I find it incredible that any publisher would terminate its access to
its
> > titles on the 31st December. Who's around to get anything sorted at that
> > time?
> >
> > I should point out that on checking today, I find that access for two of
> > these titles has now been extended, one by a month, and one by 3 months,
> > which is obviously good news. However, I hadn't received any
communication
> > regarding these two extensions. Unfortunately one of our subscriptions,
> > Radiology, remains expired.
> >
> > The ASA has a code of practice for the gracing of electronic
subscriptions
> > which calls "on all publishers to grace their electronic journals for
the
> > first two months of the year in an effort to prevent so many customers
being
> > denied access to their journals on January 1st each year even when their
> > subscriptions have been renewed and pre-paid in good time", which can be
> > found at: http://www.subscription-agents.org/egrace.html, but their list
of
> > publishers which grace electronic subscriptions is woefully short, and
> > doesn't appear to have been updated since June 2002!! Only 14
publishers
> > are listed.
> >
> > The main problem remains - how do we know what grace period each
publisher
> > offers at the beginning of each subscription year for our electronic
> > subscriptions? Do we have to contact each publisher and ask them? I
would
> > recommend that all publishers offer a standard two month gracing period
as
> > recommended by the ASA, rather than each publisher doing it's own thing!
At
> > least then there would be some clarity and we, librarians, publishers,
> > agents and intermediaries would have a standard to which we could all
work
> > to. The present situation with all publishers having different cut off
dates
> > for electronic access is a recipe for disaster.
> >
> > I realise that some publishers have concerns about gracing, in that it
could
> > be seen to encourage poor practice in the whole subscription renewals
> > process.
> >
> > However, the subscriptions renewals process is no longer the simple
thing it
> > used to be i.e. renew or cancel. The range of different
pricing/licensing
> > policies that publishers are adopting is growing, and many journals are
> > moving to publishers with differing pricing policies compared to the
former
> > publisher. This in itself must make the whole subscription renewals
process
> > more and more of a headache with many institutions having to further
amend
> > their instructions to agents, when pricing policies are found to have
> > changed after the renewal instructions have gone to the agent.
> >
> > I should point out that my own institution still hasn't received the
> > invoices for the majority of our 2004 subscriptions from our major
agent,
> > Ebsco, but this is partly the result of our department and our
institution
> > undergoing a major reorganisation in the summer of 2003, which has
required
> > major changes to our account by Ebsco for 2004. We are also still
picking up
> > the pieces from the whole Divine situation.
> >
> > Some publishers I've contacted in the past week are still processing
> > renewals/payments for the 2004 subscription period, which makes checking
> > whether subscriptions have been renewed/paid even more difficult.
> >
> > In other words there are lots of valid reasons why there may be delays
in
> > payment to publishers from agents, delays in publishers processing
payments,
> > and delays in subscribers informing agents of their requirements for
2004.
> > The adoption of a standard gracing period by all publishers, whether
large
> > or small, would do a lot to alleviate the problems we face each year
with
> > loss of access to some of our subscriptions.
> >
> > We also need to remember that at the end of the day it is our readers
that
> > are inconvenienced by this loss of access, and that they may lose
patience
> > with publishers that terminate our access so readily.
> >
> > That's all for now folks.
> >
> > 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]
> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> >
>
> *****************
>
> Dr Peter King
> Assistant Director (Information Management)
> University of Bristol Information Services
> Tyndall Avenue, Bristol BS8 1TJ, United Kingdom.
>
> Tel. +44 (0)117 928 8005
> Fax. +44 (0)117 925 5334
> Email [log in to unmask]
>
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