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| Higher Education Funding Council for England | Higher Education Funding Council for Wales |
| Scottish Higher Education Funding Council | Department of Education Northern Ireland |
Commonwealth Higher Education Management Service
Ref 98/22
Evaluation of the UK Pilot Site Licence Initiative - Phase II
May 1998
The electronic version of this document contains the Foreword, Contents and Executive Summary only. The full report is available in Word97 or RTF formats.
FOREWORD FROM THE FUNDING BODIES
The Pilot Site Licence Initiative (PSLI) was set up in 1995 by the four higher education funding bodies in the UK. Its aim was to address two problems: the spiral of increased prices for academic journals leading to cancelled subscriptions and further price rises; and copyright laws restricting copying and distribution of materials. Both problems were identified in a report by the Joint Funding Councils' Libraries Review Group, chaired by Sir Brian Follett.In April 1997 the funding councils published a report on Phase I of the evaluation of the UK Pilot Site Licence Initiative. The evaluation covered many aspects of the PSLI since the Initiative began in 1995, and was undertaken by the Commonwealth Higher Education Management Service (CHEMS).
Phase II of the evaluation was commissioned by the funding councils in order to establish usage of PSLI within higher education institutions, and should be read in conjunction with the Phase I report. Views and conclusions in both reports are those of the consultants who prepared them - CHEMS. If you have any queries about the pilot initiative, please contact Jacqueline Fitzgerald, the Managing Agent for the Initiative, on tel: 0171 873 2599, fax: 0171 873 5080 or e-mail: managing.agent@jisc.ac.uk. Queries concerning the successor scheme which is being run by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) should be addressed to David Cook, JISC, on tel: 0117 931 7250, fax: 0117 931 7255 or e-mail: D.Cook@hefce.ac.uk.
Comments from institutions funded by SHEFC and HEFCW should be sent to the relevant funding body. Comments from institutions funded by HEFCE or DENI, and from all other respondents, should be sent to the HEFCE by 1 July 1998, addressed to: Rebecca Witt, Policy Division, HEFCE, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol BS16 1QD.
CONTENTS
| GLOSSARY | |
| EXECUTIVE SUMMARY | |
| 1 | INTRODUCTION |
| The purpose of this report | |
| Our work programme | |
| 2 | THE INSTITUTIONS |
| Library questionnaires | |
| Evaluation | |
| Journal cancellations | |
| Other comments on the PSLI | |
| 3 | THE PUBLISHERS |
| Electronic access to scholarly journals | |
| Value Added Tax, archiving issues, intermediaries, etc | |
| Electronic access under PSLI and usage levels | |
| 4 | CONCLUSIONS |
| What users want from Mark II | |
| Emerging good practice in institutions | |
| Usage of the PSLI within institutions | |
| APPENDIX I | Phase II Evaluation: Questionnaire |
| APPENDIX II | Phase II Evaluation Supplementary Questionnaire: Journal Cancellations |
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1 CHEMS' Phase I report on the evaluation of the PSLI, published in April 1997, recommended that PSLI Mark II should go ahead (but without pump-priming by the funding councils), that additional publishers be invited to join, and that a successor body in the HE sector should take over management of the Initiative. These recommendations were accepted by the funding councils and subsequently endorsed by librarians, publishers and other key players. The response by HEIs to the CHEMS report endorsed the value of the PSLI and strongly supported its continuation or extension.
2 Phase II of the evaluation, commencing in April 1997, focused on usage of the PSLI within institutions: the views of both librarians and participating publishers were sought and wider feedback gained from discussions at conferences, etc. Two questionnaires sent to university librarians (one on usage of the PSLI and one on journal cancellations) produced a cross-sector response from 70 and 52 institutions respectively. The findings were as follows.
3 Though practice varies considerably, most HEIs subscribe to a small number of titles/services under site licence agreements (PSLI and others). There is currently little uniformity of approach in cataloguing of PSLI e-journals, an area where CHEMS recommends the sharing of experience to inform good practice, especially since librarians voice concern about the resources needed to keep lists of e-journals updated. In most HEIs, funds saved as a result of PSLI have been used for the benefit of the libraries, not clawed back by the institution. Evidence to support fears that increased access to e-journals would reduce photocopying income was lacking. Progress has been made in solving technical problems, relating to the use of Adobe Acrobat and printing out of articles, but these have by no means been entirely eradicated. Most libraries have undertaken a range of activities to promote either PSLI specifically or as part of a push on e-journals; this is another area where the promotion of good practice through the sharing of experience is advised. CHEMS' expectations that the PSLI would result in a high level of journal cancellations have not been met, but uncertainty about the future of the PSLI may explain this lack of action. Disappointingly, very little formal or informal internal evaluation of the Initiative had taken place, and hard data on usage levels are likewise unavailable from most HEIs. Librarians feel that this should be provided by the publishers, but concerns raised by the latter regarding issues of commercial sensitivity and unduly heavy overheads in producing the data do also need to be addressed. Other issues that need to be resolved by negotiation between HEIs and publishers are those of VAT and archiving.
4 Informally, librarians suggest that PSLI titles are most heavily used by teachers and researchers in the science and technology community and that their reaction to it is almost universally favourable. Usage statistics from three of the participating publishers support the view that the PSLI is mainly used by senior academic staff from 'old' universities, with six institutions in particular featuring as heavy users of all three publishers' titles. The publishers' statistics also suggest that there is a core of heavily used material and a large number or titles consulted on a more occasional basis, raising the possibility of a licence agreement enabling librarians to negotiate different discount levels on titles from the same publisher.
5 Generally librarians wish PSLI to be extended and to involve as wide a range of disciplines and publishers as possible, but on the basis of a single point of access and interface for users and a single contract model for each type of acquisition (e.g. journal subscription, individual article supply). Involvement by JISC and the PA in drafting a proposed 'Model Licence' in July 1997 is an encouraging sign.
GLOSSARY
| Adobe Acrobat | Software used to read PDF documents |
| Adonis | Originally an acronym for Article Delivery Over Network Information Systems, now a full-text journal article service on CD-ROM |
| ARL | Association of Research Libraries |
| BIDS | Bath Information and Data Services |
| BLDSC | British Library Document Supply Centre |
| Catchword | Internet publishing solutions provider for publishers of academic journals and research materials |
| CEI | Committee for Electronic Information |
| CHEST | Combined Higher Education Software Team |
| CLARCS | Copyright Licensing Agency's Rapid Clearance Service |
| DENI | Department of Education for Northern Ireland |
| DOI | Digital Object Identifier |
| EDINA-PCI | Edinburgh Data and Information Access Periodicals Contents Index |
| eLib Programme | Electronic libraries programme funded by JISC |
| European Business ASAP | Provides Internet access to full-text articles from 100+ Europe-oriented business and trade publications |
| HEFCE | Higher Education Funding Council for England |
| HEFCW | Higher Education Funding Council for Wales |
| HEI | Higher education institution |
| HENSA | Higher Education National Software Archive |
| HTTP | Hyper Text Transfer Protocol |
| IDEAL | International Digital Electronic Access Library |
| ILL | Inter library loans |
| IOPP | Institute of Physics Publishing Ltd |
| JISC | Joint Information Systems Committee of the higher education funding bodies |
| JSTOR | Electronic journal storage project based at the University of Michigan |
| Library Association UC&R | Library Association Universities Colleges and Research Section |
| OCLC | Online Computer Library Centre |
| PA | Publishers' Association |
| Portable Document Format | |
| PSLI | Pilot Site Licence Initiative |
| SCONUL | Standing Conference of National and University Librarians |
| SHEFC | Scottish Higher Education Funding Council |
| STM | Scientific, technical, medical |
| WWW | World Wide Web |