We would support this.
We had problems last week when our access to Veterinary Record stopped working via Highwire- the publisher had set 23 December as the expiry date for the subscription, so that was a week short to start with, even without any gracing periods.
In several of the cases where our access stopped recently was where the publisher had been paid by our agent, but they hadn't cashed the cheque/ had allocated the payment to the incorrect account/changed the subscription number without telling us, etc.
One publisher did email me to say that they had renewed our online access for 2007, but when I checked I found that they had actually activated 2 other titles, and not the ones we wanted!
There should be a grace period of a minimum of 30 days unless the publisher has heard from you that the library is definitely cancelling the title.
I'm sure that if there was a proper grace period applied to online access, the publisher (& and the agents) would get far less emails to deal with from libraries regarding access that isn't working ....
Jeremy Evans
Library
National Institute for Biological Standards and Control (NIBSC)
Blanche Lane
South Mimms, Potters Bar
Herts EN6 3QG UK
01707 641000
-----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: 10 January 2007 12:20
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Gracing Periods - Why Aren't More Publishers Adopting These?
Hi,
It's the same old story again!
It's only 10 days into 2007 and already we are finding that we have already
suffered several losses of access to our electronic journals. We only know
about some of these due to problems being reported by our users or because
we received automated email alerts from those few services that provide
them. How many more losses of access have we suffered that we have yet to
uncover? It is totally unacceptable for publishers to remove our access to
our subscriptions without first trying to see if there is an underlying
problem that has caused them to believe that a subscription has not been
renewed for 2007.
Yet all of these problems could have been avoided if the publishers in
question had implemented a gracing period. This would give the parties
concerned some time to resolve the problems. Whilst many publishers do
implement gracing periods many don't implement them at all. Another problem
is that different publishers are implementing different gracing periods,
further complicating the situation. Some publishers only implement gracing
on the print journal, which isn't much help if one has an e-only
subscription.
Yesterday we found that we had lost access to the Journal of Wound Care - an
Emap publication. We contacted the publisher and found that although they
had received payment, they hadn't updated our account. The excuse given was
that this didn't always automatically happen when we used an agent. This is
sloppy. We had the same problem last year and the excuse given was the same.
We have also lost access to the American Journal of Psychiatry, several MIT
Press journals. Several other journals that we had lost access to have now
had access restored and these include Radiology and Endocrinology. In fact
we lost access to a number of journals towards the end of last year and in
these cases the problem appears to have been related to the fact that the
publishers concerned had entered the subscription period from the date they
received payment from our agents rather than the subscription period that
that payment was for (but that's another story).
Can I please urge that all publishers/intermediaries implement a decent
gracing period as a matter of urgency. It is really unfair that we are
losing access when publishers are still processing payments from agents.
As with many other institutions this is a very busy time of the year for our
electronic journals. Penalising our users who are increasingly confused and
bemused about why they can't access some of the journals is really not on!
The purpose of gracing is to give agents/librarians/publishers some time to
resolve errors that may have happened in the renewal process, which is an
increasingly complicated process as publishers change their subscription
policies/options. We all need to live in the real world where mistakes do
happen.
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]
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