I really think this 'knowledgebase' is something subscription agents should
be providing, as a logical extension of what they already do - but I suspect
their current systems just can't cope with the complexity and variety of all
the models out there. If they were able to make progress in this direction
I'm sure their role in an increasingly online market place would be much
more secure.

Sarah
--
Sarah Thompson
Resource Acquisition Librarian
JB Morrell Library
University of York
Heslington
York YO10 5DD

Email: [log in to unmask]
Tel: 01904 434515
Fax: 01904 433866 



-----Original Message-----
From: An informal open list set up by the UK Serials Group
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Lewis Nicholas Mr (LIB)
l002
Sent: 28 September 2005 19:52
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The Renewal Nightmare - How Do We Know Who Is Publishing What
in 2006 and What Pricing Policy is Being Applied?


"Should there not be some sort of knowledge base we could all trust that we
could go to for this type of information or am I dreaming of the
impossible?"

Yes there really should be this knowledgebase and I don't think it need be
that difficult to maintain - maybe we should give up the day job and go into
business Lesley? ( ; 

It is difficult to maintain when we're all trying to do it on our own, but
would be easy if we pooled our combined knowledge.

All credit to the publishers (and colleagues!) who now post changes etc to
lis-e-journals. Unfortunately many of the more complex models are not
posted.

I'd lend my support to any initiative to improve the situation.

Nick

Nicholas Lewis
Electronic Services Librarian
The Library, University of East Anglia,
Norwich, Norfolk, England, NR4 7TJ
Tel: +44(0)1603-592382 Fax: +44(0)1603-591010 [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 Lesley Crawshaw
Sent: Wednesday, September 28, 2005 5:16 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: The Renewal Nightmare - How Do We Know Who Is Publishing What in
2006 and What Pricing Policy is Being Applied?

Hi,

 

I recently spent a week doing the renewal instructions for our agents for
the 2006 subscription year for the set of journals I have responsibility for
- I have to tell you all that it was an extremely arduous and sometimes
frustrating process. 

 

Some of the things we have to identify are:

 

1.	Which journals we have subscriptions to have been taken over by
which publisher for 2006 so that we can provide the correct renewal
information. Unfortunately whilst some publishers are very good at telling
us what new titles they have taken over some aren't so good about telling us
which journals they are no longer going to publish. In some cases the old
publisher has told us a journal has moved to another publisher, but when we
contact the new publisher they aren't always aware of this change. 
2.	Which publishers have changed their pricing policy or the
available
formats e.g. online only, print plus online, print only. We have also found
that some society publishers have introduced tiered pricing for 2006. e.g.
the American Society of Plant Biologists has introduced Tiered pricing from
2006, but you have to contact them for pricing, the American Psychiatric
Association has introduced Tiered pricing from 2006, but the site on
Highwire still contains pricing for 2005.  We only found this out by
directly emailing the publisher for this information. 
3.	What options are available for institutions - some publishers
sites
make it incredibly hard to find institutional pricing information, meaning
either one has to email them or try and contact someone who knows. In some
cases some smaller publishers/societies don't realise they have
institutional subscribers!
4.	Whether there are special packages available where we have
multiple
subscriptions e.g. several years ago now I found out by visiting the
publisher's site that the American Society of Microbiology had introduced a
special tiered pricing whereby an institution could purchase online access
to all its journals for a special price, and cancel its existing
subscriptions. If we hadn't visited that particular publishers site how
would we have known about this?
5.	Where we have to sign a new license each subscription year. For
many
publishers it appears that a license isn't necessarily limited to a
particular time period, with other publishers e.g. American Medical
Association we find that we need to submit new data for the relevant
teaching faculty each year in order to get the relevant pricing, plus we
have to sign a new license each year. 
6.	Whether institutions have rights to access online content where
it
is available, some societies e.g. Society for Vascular Ultrasound restrict
access to their online journal to members only.
7.	Whether the subscriber number we have on record for particular
subscriptions is still the correct one e.g. we found out that the American
Physiological Society changed its numbering system about a year ago, but we
weren't aware of this until we contacted them for confirmation. Luckily for
us this didn't affect our online access to our subscriptions in this case.
However, this can be important as sometimes a change of subscriber number
can be enough to lose us access as we found out most recently had happened
with our online access to Ambio. 

 

The list goes on and on!

 

Some people might think that we should be able to make such decisions based
on the information provided by our agents, without having to spend hours
trawling publishers sites to find this information or in some cases email
the publishers directly when either up to date information is not on their
web site or their web site contains no information whatsoever about
institutional subscriptions and the formats available for 2006. However, we
find the information our agents provide us with is never up to date, and we
find that we have to make notes of e.g. that Triangle journals (except
Forum) will be published by T&F Informa from 2006, that Whurr Publishers
journals will be published by Wiley from 2006, etc. etc. Still we don't find
Ulrich's Periodicals Directory on the web any more up to date with such
forthcoming changes.  

 

As many of us have to make renewal decisions for 2006 in September (or even
earlier for some institutions as I understand) based on inadequate
information one wonders how any of us are ever going to get it right. The
problem is the more renewal instructions we get wrong, the more problems and
time we have to dedicate to getting it right in the new subscription year. 

 

Do others out there find the whole renewal process is getting harder and
harder each year?

 

Should there not be some sort of knowledge base we could all trust that we
could go to for this type of information or am I dreaming of the impossible?

 

I feel much better now getting this off my chest!

 

Cheers

Lesley

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lesley Crawshaw, Faculty Information Consultant

Learning and Information Services

University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, AL10 9AB

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

email: [log in to unmask]

phone: 01707 284662 fax: 01707 284666

list owner: [log in to unmask]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~