Interested in E-Pubs? Gary Klein
has
written a lengthy critique.
One of the problems with netLibrary is a problem
that is common to
many other publisher & distributor driven systems for
delivering online
access to journal articles.
When was the last time you heard a faculty member
say \”I\’ve been out
of the loop on research in a growing field of my
discipline, and I would
like to catch up… Can you show me how I can read
some new articles
online from Oxford University Press?\”
After all, Oxford University Press publishes 170
different journal
titles, many of which are highly esteemed, and they are
going online,
right?
Interested in E-Pubs? Gary Klein
has
written a lengthy critique.
One of the problems with netLibrary is a problem
that is common to
many other publisher & distributor driven systems for
delivering online
access to journal articles.
When was the last time you heard a faculty member
say \”I\’ve been out
of the loop on research in a growing field of my
discipline, and I would
like to catch up… Can you show me how I can read
some new articles
online from Oxford University Press?\”
After all, Oxford University Press publishes 170
different journal
titles, many of which are highly esteemed, and they are
going online,
right? Actually, only 55% of OUP\’s current journal titles have
ever put
their articles online in either PDF or HTML. Then we
have 25% of their
titles that have never even placed abstracts of their
articles online!
So if your faculty does secure access to OUP\’s
online titles, are
they really able to access ALL of the current journals
from Oxford
University Press? No, they are only getting a subset,
that have been
mounted online.
Does OUP provide sufficient coverage of every
discipline & sub-area
of research that your faculty are interested in?
Someone else might say \”Why sign a contract with
Oxford Univ Press,
when there is another publisher that produces more
journals than they do.\”
If you follow that logic, should we cancel all
subscriptions from
independent presses, and only buy from firms such as
Haworth or Sage, and
only look at the numbers, rather than the quality of the
journals?
Those are the types of problems that plague many
publisher driven
initiatives such as MUSE (from Johns Hopkins
University Press), EMERALD
(from MCB Press), IDEAL (Academic Press).
Typically, they are not the only publishers in a given
field, so if
you do pay for access to their electronic journals, you
will not be
getting access to other independent university presses.
There also are
other publishers, that just are not quite there yet, that do
not have any
of their journals in any online format.
Granted that Project MUSE does incorporate a
growing number of
journals from other academic presses, but again, how
many people say \”I am
looking for all the latests journal issues from Duke
University Press?\”
And some of the publisher\’s company names simply
do not do justice
for the variety of journals that they produce.
How many of you would think of turning to Elsevier
Science\’s web page
to locate the current table of contents for ASSESSING
WRITING, the
JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL HISTORY or for the JOURNAL
OF ACADEMIC LIBRARIANSHIP?
Are those covering interdisciplinary aspects of a
science, that I
have not heard about, because I have not read the
\”right\” journals? Yet,
they chose to title themselves not just \”Elsevier\” but
ELSEVIER SCIENCE on
its main web page (as if they needed to prevent
confusion with other
companies with Elsevier in their names).
If you want to skim through the literature as a way of
getting back
up to speed, in some areas, you would do very well to
focus only on
journals coming from one professional association,
such as the American
Psychological Association for Psychology. But there
are tons of
competitive journals in every field. Sometimes, they
come from competitor
professional groups in other countries, or with a slightly
different
regional or interdisciplinaryfocus. Other times, the
good journals come
from for-profit publishers. And sometimes they come
from university
presses, or from non-profit groups (such as
HELDREF).
Instead of putting our electronic bets on one
publisher per
discipline, we also have the option of turning to
database journal
aggregators, such as IAC/Gale\’s ACADEMIC
UNIVERSE, Ebsco\’s ACADEMIC SOURCE
ELITE, Lexis-Nexis\’ ACADEMIC UNIVERSE,
Bell&Howell Information &
Learning\’s PROQUEST, and the full text databases
from H.W.Wilson.
Instead of providing access only to specific
publishers (and paying
for the seldom used narrow focused titles, as well as
the established and
reputable disciplinary journals), the aggregators try to
offer a mixture
of traditional discipline focus, with interdisciplinary
titles, as well as
journals that look at things from a totally different
perspective. Each
of the aggregators tries to include the \”core literature\” of
a field, as
well as various spin-offs from traditional disciplinary
perspectives.
I cannot imagine how many of the aggregators
would try to negotiate
the full text rights for ANIMAL REPRODUCTION
SCIENCE, the journal
THERIOGENOLOGY, and LIVESTOCK PRODUCTION
SCIENCE, although they come from
the same publisher that also produces ENERGY
ECONOMICS, ECOLOGICAL
ECONOMICS and NATURAL RESOURCES FORUM
which clearly have broader
audiences.
And what about gaining online access to those
independently produced
journals, often times where there is only 2 or 3
publications, from a
particular publisher (such as WILLAMETTE LAW
REVIEW)… No, we don\’t seek
out separate contracts with the hundreds of law
schools that publish law
reviews. Instead we sign a contract with Lexis-Nexis,
who has the rights
to distribute over 200 law reviews to us, through
ACADEMIC UNIVERSE.
How does this analysis of online journals compare
with NetLibrary\’s
array of books?
Readers do not focus on publishing houses, instead
they ask for the
latest book by a certain author, or the latest books on a
certain topic.
For the most part, faculty don\’t care if the latest
research article
on cancer comes from the SCIENCE, NATURE, JAMA,
LANCET, CELL or the NEW
ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE, because they are
all esteemed, long standing
publishers of quality, peer reviewed research.
If electronic books & electronic journals are going to
succeed, they
need to provide access to literature regardless of who
published it.
If each publishing house is going to provide its own
unique software
for accessing only its collection of journals & books,
then no one will
succeed by converting to electronic formats.
Patrons do not want to have to cope with 5 different
systems for
accessing literature (just as they refused to cope with 7
different
systems for playing prerecorded music in the past thirty
years: 78, 33,
45, cassettes, 8 track cartridges, DAT, compact disks).
We need to get out from our desk & computer work
stations, and
communicate with the vendors, what we see as the
various drawbacks,
before we sign any long term contracts. We also need
to communicate with
the vendors what we see as the strengths of each
electronic distribution
system.
Don\’t just grouse amongst yourselves, go out, and
communicate with
the people, organizations & companies that are trying to
win our business
with products or services that need tweaking.
GARY KLEIN, Management & Economics Librarian
Hatfield Library / Willamette University / Salem, ORv
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