170 years of humanities, science and social science research available free to UK education and research
Brill and JISC Collections have today agreed to make Brill Journal Archive Online, a collection of 100 journal titles available to universities, colleges and research councils in the UK. Researchers, teaching staff and students can have free access to more than 170 years of content and over 50,000 articles covering biology, humanities, human rights, international law, science and the social sciences.
This agreement will provide access to an important archive that would only have been available at a small number of institutions. Researchers across the UK will benefit from ease of access to the archive online and save both time and money travelling and reviewing the archive at other institutions.
“Brill is very proud to be selected by JISC Collections to offer Brill Journal Archive Online to universities, colleges and research councils in the UK”, said Sam Bruinsma, Director of Business Development & E-Publishing at Brill. “Our journal archive goes back to the 19th century and includes for example T'oung Pao, our Chinese journal, which started in 1890 and the Dutch Archive on Church History, which started in 1829. We at Brill feel that launching a historical collection like this does credit to the fact that we are one of the oldest publishing houses of Europe, this year celebrating our 325th anniversary.”
This significant archive has been purchased at a national level by JISC Collections following an open and transparent procurement process, with criteria set by the academic community. All of the bids received from publishers were marked and ranked by the community according to their academic quality, value for money and the willingness of the participants to meet the user needs of the JISC community. The central purchase provides institutions with the freedom to choose to provide access based on the needs of their staff, students and researchers rather than based on whether they can afford them, thus continuing to enrich the research experience.
Liam Earney, Team Manager at JISC Collections explains how institutions will benefit from this new agreement, “In addition to the significant cost savings to institutions, researchers will save time by searching for the full text of the articles they need online. Furthermore this can also stimulate the discovery of articles that would have otherwise remained untapped to open new avenues for research. Articles can also be used by students for their coursework and incorporated in teaching and learning materials across a diverse range of subjects and courses. This is part of our ongoing commitment to widening access to essential research material that many institutions simply would not ordinarily be able to afford and we are delighted to offer Brill Journal Archive Online to our community.”
Institutions wanting access to Brill Journal Archive Online will need to complete a licence agreement. For further information, please go to http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/catalogue/brill.
Notes for editors
About Brill
Founded in 1683 in Leiden, the Netherlands, Brill is a leading international academic publisher in the fields of Ancient Near East and Egypt; Middle East and Islamic Studies; Asian Studies (incl. Hotei imprint); Classical Studies; Medieval and Early Modern Studies; Biblical and Religious Studies; Social Sciences ; Biology; Science (VSP imprint); Human Rights and Public International Law (Nijhoff imprint).With offices in Leiden and Boston (MA), Brill today publishes more than 100 journals and around 600 new books and reference works each year. In addition, Brill is a major provider of primary source materials online and on microform for researchers in the humanities and social sciences through its imprint IDC. In principle all publications are available in print or microform, as well as in electronic form. Our customers are academic and research institutions, libraries, and scholars. Brill is a publicly traded company and listed on Euronext Amsterdam NV. http://www.brill.nl
About JISC Collections
JISC Collections, who purchased the Collection and negotiated the licence for Brill Journal Archive Online on behalf of colleges, universities and research councils in the UK, was established as a mutual trading company by the UK further and higher education funding councils in 2006 to negotiate with publishers of online information and other owners of digital content. The range of resources licensed for use by such agreements constitutes a large national collection of online resources for education and research. JISC Collections is funded by JISC. For further information, please go to http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk