Hi,

From my perspective transferring journals continue to be a major source of grief/irritation for institutional subscribers despite the Transfer Code of Practice.

The main issues that continue to have to be dealt with are (and I am sure there are more):

1.       When exactly the content is going to move from the old site? Sometimes new content is available on the new site and the content from the old site can take some time to move, but we are rarely told when this is to happen meaning that we end up doing our own checking (assuming we can find the time).

2.       Lack of formal confirmation from most (if not all) publishers about whether prior rights will be honoured meaning that one has to make contact with the publisher to try and make sure these prior rights are honoured.

3.       Lack of formal confirmation from most (if not all) publishers about whether current access has been set up for current subscribers meaning that one has to make contact with the publisher to try and make sure when the content is there that we have access.

4.       Lack of an adequate overlap period between content being available on the old and new site

5.       Lack of currency on some (if not all) 3rd party systems so that access can be activated in a timely manner so that:

a.       users don't find themselves unable to be pointed to the content they want to access

b.      libraries can update their OPACs and link resolvers etc so that they reflect the current location of the content

So what has this got to do with the British Psychological Society journals?

For a start we've known about this transfer since the end of July 2010.

This morning I received an email from Ingenta informing me that from the 1st January 2011 IngentaConnect would no longer be hosting content for the British Psychological Society journals and that these journals would be hosted on the Wiley Online Library from 2011. That's in just under 3 weeks time! The email also provided me with links for each of the new journals.

At the moment the only content on the Wiley Online Library are advance articles and everyone of the articles that I tried to access (to confirm our access rights had been set up for these titles) gave a DOI error (meaning I've since filled in several forms reporting these error messages). This also means that I can't confirm our access has been set up. It also means that I can't communicate these changes to our Psychologists as they will be frustrated if they see articles available which they can't access. What I also need to know is when the backfile content will become available on the Wiley Online Library?

I also checked Serials Solutions to see if there were links for the BPS journals to the Wiley Online Library and guess what? - there aren't any yet. This means that we can't point our users to this content so that from the 01/01/11 our users can be directed to this correct place for this content. This means that we must now contact Wiley to check whether they've arranged that Serials Solutions (and other 3rd party systems) provide links to the new site. Once again there will almost certainly be a lag period where our OPAC and link resolver are pointing to the old site where the content will no longer be available. The consequences of this is frustrated users and often an initial decline in usage.

If there was an overlap period when this content was hosted by both the Wiley Online Library and IngentaConnect then I wouldn't have too many concerns as this would give us time to make the changes. The problem is that in just under 3 weeks (one week of which will be a vacation period for many institutions) the content will be removed from IngentaConnect completely. Surely that content should be available now on the Wiley Online Library?

The alternative solution would be to provide re-directs from IngentaConnect to the journals on the Wiley Online Library. Is this going to happen? If it is who is going to tell us or do we have to check this ourselves?

All we need is appropriate and adequate information from the parties concerned so that we don't have to expend valuable time and effort each time a transfer of content happens.

Am I alone in this or do others share my frustration?

Cheers
Lesley

Lesley Crawshaw
Knowledge &  Business Intelligence Consultant
Information Hertfordshire
University of Hertfordshire
Tel: 01707 286448






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