Friday, September 14, 2001

Canadian Universities Band Together in a Giant Journal-Licensing Deal By JANICE PASKEY Calgary, Alberta In Canada, 64 universities have banded together to spend nearly $30-million (U.S.) on nationwide site licenses for online scholarly journals. The National Site Licensing Project will provide 650 journals and numerous citation indexes to its members. The three-year licensing agreement is expected to create a more level playing field between big and small universities. "Every year, Canadian libraries spent more and more money and got fewer journals," said Deb Debruijn, executive director of the project. "We thought there had to be a better way. We were a captive audience for publishers, who weren't greedy or depraved, but running a business to make a profit." For small universities, like the University of Prince Edward Island, it will mean access to literally hundreds of new publications -- a whole library's worth available digitally. The project was to have been launched Tuesday in Halifax with the Canadian Prime Minister in attendance. Because of the attacks in the United States, the event was canceled, but researchers were able to access the digital library, which has gradually come online since the spring. The Canadian Site Licensing Project was financed with almost $13-million provided by the Canada Foundation for Innovation, a federal agency that provides matching grants to researchers. Member institutions raised additional money from their own budgets and from provincial governments. The Canadians then negotiated with Academic Press, the American Chemical Society, the American Mathematical Society, the Institute for Scientific Information, the Institute for Physics Publishing, the Royal Society for Chemistry, and Springer-Verlag, a giant publisher that offers many scholarly journals. Organizers developed a licensing model based on price and technical support and used that as a baseline with which to assess bids from publishers interested in participating. Journals began coming online for researchers earlier this year, and universities are now building their indexes and training staff members to use the system. "It's a huge step forward for research support," said Ernie Ingles, the associate vice president for learning systems at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton. He estimates that consortium members will save from 10 to 50 percent per journal, but says the prime advantage for his institution is that so many more journals will be available to scholars. While some institutions are canceling print subscriptions, Mr. Ingles says the University of Alberta will continue receiving them. "Many of our students and researchers still prefer printed copies," he said, "and if ever there's a problem with the license system, we've got our hard copy." Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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