L&LR staff blog

Back in November, I blogged about the disproportionate nature of our e-journal usage, once you break it down by title (if you remember, one single title is responsible for 5% of all of our e-journal hits, while a small European country’s worth of journals are never accessed at all).

While looking at the A-to-Z usage stats some more, I started to notice some other unusual features – not, this time, relating to individual titles, but to the usage of entire packages of journals. (“Packages” for A-to-Z purposes, are things like Academic Search Elite, HeinOnline, SwetsWise, etc.)

Here’s a loverly pie chart:

Starting in the top-right hand corner (coloured light blue), 16% of our e-journal usage can be ascribed to titles from (the EBSCOhost package) Academic Search Elite. No surprise there.

Going clockwise, the next slice (the dark-pink/magenta/purply-brown/mauve/maroon??? one. I don’t do colours! This website calls it “rouge”…) represents the usage of our SwetsWise subscriptions – 13%.

Then, the first surprise: the first ‘exploded’ slice in the bottom right of the chart (cream) represents the usage of the various free or open-access e-journal packages which are listed on the A-to-Z.

12% of all our usage – one eighth – derives from journals which we don’t pay for. Most of this is from journals listed in the EBSCO Open Access Journals package.

Continuing clockwise round the three bottom slices (pale blue, purple, sort-of-peachy), we encounter Business Source Premier (10% of total usage), ScienceDirect (8%), and ABI/INFORM Global (7%).

The next exploded slice (blue) was another surprise to me… this 7% of usage is for the data-collection on the A-to-Z of links to the OPAC for our current print journal subscriptions.

…I’ll let that sink in… one in every fifteen hits on the “Electronic” Journals A-to-Z is actually someone looking for a print journal.

I only really added the current subs data to the A-to-Z as an intellectual exercise, and it’s overdue a review (they are created manually, and of course they go out of date quickly). Perhaps I should be taking it more seriously.

Going up the left-hand edge of the chart are:

• IngentaConnect (4%)
• SPORTDiscus with Full Text (4%)
• Sage Publications (2%)
• Factiva (2%)
• Oxford University Press (2%)
• HeinOnline Law Journals Library (2%)

The Rub’ al-Khali at the top of the chart (11%) is everything else. That’s everything else including Emerald, including JSTOR, and including LexisNexis. Who knew?

Academic librarians are unhappy that some of the UK’s largest university business schools are being asked to pay extra to be allowed to link to articles published in a key journal in their field.

Harvard Business Review (issn:0017-8012), published by HBP (Harvard Business Press), has long been available as part of the EBSCOhost Business Source suite of databases.

However, in an email to the chair of the BBSLG (British Business Schools Librarians Group), EBSCO outlined that, as a vendor of HBP’s content, they are obliged to disable persistent linking to Harvard Business Review, at the publisher’s request.

According to EBSCO, the terms & conditions of their supply of HBP content have always included a clause limiting use of the journal to individual, private study, and explicitly prohibiting linking from Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) for teaching purposes.

Three libraries have already had their facility to create persistent links removed, according to the BBSLG, who have written a letter of complaint to EBSCO.

A flyer circulated by EBSCO ‘invites’ individual BBSLG member-libraries to upgrade their EBSCOhost Business Source subscriptions to a level which would “continue to allow [the institution] to persistent link to HBR articles for an additional annual fee“: each institution’s fee being calculated on past use of the journal and their business-school student numbers.

For one, Russell Group, UK university, EBSCO have demanded £15,000 in order that the institution be allowed to go on creating persistent links for use in teaching.

According to correspondence between EBSCO and the BBSLG, Harvard Business Press are concerned that unauthorised persistent-linking from VLEs to EBSCOhost has harmed HBP’s separate provision of course packs for HEIs on a commercial basis. They cite a “direct quantifiable link between the two which can be clearly demonstrated financially between the diminishing course pack use and persistent linking“.

Should institutions decline the opportunity to pay the additional EBSCOhost fee, EBSCO asks that they inform their users that persistent-linking from a VLE to the HBR is not permitted, and that EBSCO may disable the ability to create such links.

This will not only remove the ability of academic staff to create links from a VLE, but also break any persistent links to the e-journal created by individuals in the course of their own personal study or research.

~~~

This is a retrograde step for usability in online scholarly content. Storing, recalling, and broadcasting stable hyperlinks is fundamental to the Web. It is not an add-on or a luxury.

Private, subscription-only environment it may be, but users of EBSCOhost [remembering that this includes fee-paying students] have had the rug pulled from under a basic Web experience. It may currently affect only one journal title, in one database, but this is a dangerous precedent, and one that the library community has a right to question and challenge.

Paul

Staff at Brayford may be asked about a special report on the EU that can be found in the Economist May 31st 2008 entitled ‘In the Nick of time: a special report on EU enlargement’.  We do have a copy on the third floor, but the special report can also be found on Business Source Premier (EBSCO) - the 8 articles are all listed separately and they range from page 3-16.

Hope this helps

Alison