Having gone the rounds with "Radiology," I think that there understanding
of gracing is incredible.  I wrote to them giving the check number and
date cashed and was simply informed that they didn't have a record of
it.  So sending the trusty subscription agent, we were told that Radiology's
accounting department was behind due to the holidays and would hope to
get caught up in a month.  The point is that we aren't talking about
gracing, we're talking about an organization that is grossly ineffective
and refuses to do anything to rectify its neglect or accept responsibility.

         kent mulliner, ohio university

At 10:40 AM 1/13/2004 +0000, you wrote:
>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]

K. Mulliner       Collection Development Coordinator

Ohio University Libraries                       PHONE:  740-593-2707
Athens, OH 45701-2978, USA      FAX:    740-593-2692
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