Electronic information resources group: Two-year work plan

Overview of Activities

The mission of this group is to provide advice on collecting priorities and development priorities through a process which identifies and responds to user needs and supports the execution of the JISC Collections Strategy.

Its core aims include leadership of national negotiations designed to lower the cost of access to electronic information resources, and the management of electronic information through the life cycle from negotiation to preservation.

Two main strands of work support this activity:

• Steering the negotiations for electronic resources to ensure successful negotiations, providing institutions with better licence agreements and associated pricing than they could negotiate individually. Essential in supporting this aim is the collection of information and data to support negotiations, and communication to all stakeholders.
• Supporting JISC Collection in its effort to provide shared services to aid academic libraries with issues such a licence management and the creation of machine-readable licence, the analysis of usage statistics and a registry of entitlement.

All the work of the Electronic Information Resources Working Group supports one of these two strands.

Steering Journal Negotiations

During a period when all academic libraries are under great pressure, it essential that JISC Collections is able to negotiate effectively with journal publishers, so that the UK Higher Education sector can retain access to as much scholarly information as possible.

Increasingly also, publishers are seeking more from consortia than the framework agreements, which have been the NESLi2 tradition. In return for better pricing and terms, they require consortia organisations to deliver single early payments, and to handle the paperwork associated with licensing.

In order to steer successful negotiations, the Electronic Information Resources Working Group must understand both the value to library users of the scholarly publications and also the value that the academics bring to publishers:

• In 2010 the group commissioned a report to establish the value of UK HEI's to the publishing process
• Dr Carol Tenopir, Professor at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Director of Research for the College of Communication and Information, and Director of the Center for Information and Communication Studies, will undertake research to provide the Electronic Information Resources Working Group (and all UK universities) with qualitative information about the ‘Return on Investment’ from scholarly publications.

Essential to good negotiation outcomes is clear communications to all parties involved in the supply chain – including third parties who may not be directly involved in the negotiations:

• In order to meet the demands of the NESLi2 negotiators, publishers need agreement from the societies whose journals they publish. The Electronic Information Resources Working Group will prepare a briefing document for society publishers providing them with the library perspective.

Supporting JISC Collections in its efforts to provide centralised services to support the life-cycle of electronic information resources

In challenging economic times, JISC Collections and institutions need to understand the value - in terms of both use and impact - of the content licensed.

Usage Statistics

In order to negotiate effectively, JISC Collections and its working group must have data about the use of electronic journals and the cost of that use:

• Working in collaboration with Mimas, University of Cranfield, and Evidence Base at Birmingham City University, JISC Collections is developing a Journals Usage Statistic Portal (JUSP).
• JUSP (using machine-to-machine technologies) will collect and display the usage statistics for all NELSi2 publishers for all UK Higher Education Institutions.
• JUSP will format usage statistics to allow quick analysis and comparison, and enable benchmarking against other institutions.

Licensing Comparison Tool

The management of paper licences is time-consuming and cumbersome. Paper licences do not allow for quick comparison of definitions and terms of use. Consequently, many libraries have to work from the lowest common denominator to determine which users are eligible to access a resource, and what they can do with that resource.

• Machine-readable licences are the answer to this problem. However, creating a single machine-readable licence can take many hours.
• JISC Collections is developing a tool that will allow institutions to compare and contrast different licence agreements for electronic resources.
• When it is completed, the tool will allow institutions to analyse around 80 JISC Collections licence agreements. It will also allow institutions to:
  • see easily what users can and can't do with different electronic resources
  • identify differences between the JISC model licences and agreement licences
  • compare different licences with each other
  • download licence expressions for use in library and electronic resource management systems

Entitlement

Library staff, publishers and subscription agents all spend many hours clarifying and verifying subscribed holdings.

• All NESLi2 licences provide libraries with archival rights to subscribed titles – but accessing that content, and claiming those rights (particularly if current subscriptions are cancelled) is a challenge.
• JISC Collections, working with Edina, hopes to secure funding to develop PECAN, a shared registry of entitlement.
• It aims to provide libraries and publishers, with a verified and consistent record of entitlement to scholarly publications.

Work plan

The following is a list of the planned activities for 2011. It is not exhaustive, and the group has capacity in the work plan to respond to key issues as they develop.

Work strand	Activity	Action
January 2011
Steering the negotiations for electronic resources	A practioner sub-group will meet to review the changing needs of library users in respect of citation databases and data	The sub-group will formulate recommendations for the main group, which will inform negotiations in this area
February 2011
Steering the negotiations for electronic resources	Agree which publisher agreements/products should be renewed	JISC Collections will undertake negotiations with the identified list of publishers
	Review the results of the community consultation and consider the appropriate negotiation strategy - is more than one solution required in order to meet the diverse needs of the sector?	JISC Collections will undertake negotiations accordingly
	Receive the report on e-books business models	The group will consider next steps for consortia activity for e-books
Shared service provision	Receive a report on the creation of a Licensing Comparison Tool	The group will advise on further development
Work plan and communication	Review work plan and communication strategy	JISC Collections will oversee the development of EIRWG website and implement other recommendations for communication
May 2011 (lunch time to lunch time meeting)
Steering the negotiations for electronic resources	Agree the criteria for forthcoming negotiations	JISC Collections will communicate criteria to the library community and undertake the negotiations accordingly
	Receive the report from the sub-group looking at citation databases and data	The group will advise JISC Collections
	Receive guests representing society publishers and discuss how libraries can better communicate with the societies	The group will advise JISC Collections
Shared service provision	Receive a report on the JISC Usage Statistics Portal	The group will advise on the future direction and sustainability
	Receive a report on the Open Access Fees project	The group will consider the future role of JISC Collections in this area
July 2011
Steering the negotiations for electronic resources	Review JISC Collections’ progress with major negotiations	The group will advise on next steps
	Consider the metrics that might be used to evaluate scholarly material	The group will consider if a JISC Collections needs to develop a methodology for evaluation
Shared service provision	Review progress in establishing a registry of entitlement	The group will advise on the future direction and sustainability
October 2011
Steering the negotiations for electronic resources	Review the interim report on the Return on Investment study	The group will consider what the findings tell us about the value of scholarly communications and how the value is communicated
Work plan and communication	Review work plan and communication plan for 2012	The group will implement new plans
2012
A detailed work plan for 2012 will be formulated in October 2011, it is likely to include activity in the following areas: The impact of the Government agenda for the UK HE strategy and what this means for electronic resource negotiations. Will there be a need for greater differentiation in order to meet the needs of different types of universities and different disciplines across the sector? OA Monographs: consideration of the interim findings of the OAPEN Project and what this might mean in terms of the business models for scholarly monographs.