Conference Reports

STS Heads of Science & Technology Libraries Discussion Group: Notes from ALA MidWinter Meeting, January 11, 1998

Licensing of Electronic Publications

Barclay stated that ACS is committed to listening to its customers, and that they haven't had any complaints about the products themselves. She announced a new journal pricing plan, Option B, which was developed as a result of complaints that earlier pricing plans were prohibitively expensive. Information may be found on the web at http://pubs.acs.org/journals/prices98/planb_explain.html

ACS believes that its e-journal licenses have a wide degree of flexibility, such as the ability to choose titles, rather than having to purchase a package; articles available as soon as publishable, which can be as much as 2-11 weeks before they appear in print; and that both Class C subnet and site licenses are available. Barclay also discussed new challenges, such as how to handle proxy servers; concurrent users; design issues; sales of individual articles; cookies; consortia; archiving; and aggregators.

Okerson observed that licenses are only partly concerned with copyright and that they have more to do with rules of use and relationships between users and producers. Licenses may have provisions negating copyright. The burgeoning numbers of licenses cause many problems: scalability; the need to define users and uses; clarification of the roles of consortia, subscription agents and aggregators; archiving and the need for perpetual access; and pricing models.

Licenses are labor-intensive, so scalability is a problem. How do we handle the surge of licenses produced as more and more products become electronic? Do subscription agents really negotiate the best deal, or can we do better on our own? Consortia can solve some problems, but some institutions jump from one consortium to another in order to get the best deal. With aggregators what will we do with package items that we don't want?

Some observations from the general discussion:

• Licensing won't go away, although the need for definitions will change.
• Although licenses have traditionally been negotiated by both parties, there seems to be an increase in the "click" type which leave no room for negotiation.
• Concern was raised regarding licenses based on a terminal-by-terminal basis. Publishers want to maintain a viable subscription base and so are trying different pricing and use models to accommodate different types of users.
• Many protested licenses which permit institutional subscribers to get a publication in print but not in electronic form, especially when the print indicates that additional data is present in the electronic version.
• ACS isn't in a position to deal with perpetual access yet. The question was broadened to other publishers in the audience. Someone from IEE said that they would negotiate virtually any feature in their licenses.
• Does any money generated by ACS publications go to support member services? No, and no membership money goes to support publications. A very small amount of publications money may be used to promote the chemical sciences.
• Nondisclosure statements in licenses were greatly resented by the audience. Examples were given of the ambiguity of nondisclosure; who has the need to know and who doesn't can vary considerably and must be negotiated.
• Regarding the Dutch statement on electronic licensing (Science, vol. 278, November 28, 1997, p. 1558): the statement begins with print and seemed uneven in places. It also has a level of specificity which is well-intentioned but is probably not feasible.
• All Science Librarians should take responsibility for becoming knowledgeable about licenses and review them with colleagues in order to learn their nuances and style. It is part of the selection process for acquiring many titles and information products.

The meeting ended with suggestions for future meetings:

• More on licensing; perhaps with commercial publishers.
• Explore the situation of remote users, who seem to be harmed by site licenses; how distance learning conflicts with licensing.
• Move toward consensus on our part regarding what we want to see in products and under what conditions we are willing to accept the products.
• There is currently no standard generic contract. Maybe some suggestions regarding the development of a model contract for electronic products.
• The importance of first sale and its impact on electronic products.
• What new technology do we need to provide? Hardware, software, etc. Digital object identifiers.

Two additional suggestions have been made since the meeting:

• New library construction and its impact on sci/tech collections and services (Lynn Sutton at Wayne State for example)
• How sci/tech libraries are confronting space issues: annexing, compact shelving, etc.

Anyone having any comments on these ideas or other suggestions, please contact Nan Butkovich (njb2@psu.edu or njb@psulias.psu.edu), Julia Gelfand (jgelfand@uci.edu), or Bart Lessin (aa3327@wayne.edu).

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