* Apologies for cross-posting *

Thanks to everyone who responded to my request for comments about the issue of archival/perpetual access to cancelled e-journals. The responses listed below are in no particular order.

Number of respondents: 24
Geographic locations: USA, Israel, UK, Greece, Italy
Types of institution, library, or respondent: university/college medical libraries, university business library, university science library, university libraries, consortium, corporate library, hospital libraries, research library, library student

Here are the original questions and the answers I received:

Q. How important is archival access to you when deciding whether or not to
subscribe to e-journals?

A. Nice to have but not critical except in a few essential journals. We serve a hospital system and a college of dentistry.  Medical and dental information is obsolete very quickly, so most of our patrons usage is for current material.  When we choose to drop a title and/or weed, we are looking very closely at usage AND journal impact information (ISI Web of Knowledge--Journal citation reports).  We also look at what the other [state] medical and/or dental libraries have.

A. We do try to ascertain the archival arrangement before switching to electronic only journals, and a minority of academic staff are concerned about it. However, issues like off-campus access are more important.

A. Somewhat important, it is nice to know if they change their policies or pricing in the future and you decide to cancel the title you still have something.

A. Not very

A. Archival access has recently become one consideration when evaluating a new full text database but is not usually a determining factor

A. VERY

A. important. We try to get it in the license if we can.

A. This is critically important to us.

A. It's convenient but not very important to have archival access. It wouldn't usually make any difference to our decision about whether or not to subscribe.

A. It's very important.  If a publisher doesn't at least mention that they will make provision for archival access for a particular title, we continue to subscribe to print (in many cases, this ends up being a print+online situation, since our patrons want everything electronically).

A. Very important, but not a deal breaker.  Can affect how much we are willing to pay for the service.

A. Important

A. Very important

A. Archival access is not a major consideration when subscribing: we can rarely afford deals which include large back access anyway. We do not therefore make specific requirements with licenses.

A. Archival access is on our checklist, meaning I always find out what the publisher/vendor's policy is for archiving, but the problem is that sometimes you just really want or need the resource, so archival policy is really never a deal-breaker. I really regret this, because along with the bright sunny side of multiple users being able to access a resource from multiple locations simultaneously is the dark side - not really having a guaranteed archive, or at the very least having to pay a premium for it.

A. If archival access is important, we are getting print as well as e-journals.  The journals that we only access electronically are expendable.

A. It is rather important, but as regards our experience here at [our institution], almost no publisher gives any assurance on future access. World scientific, for example, surely cuts off the access if you stop subscribing. We had a very bad experience with Academic press when it was bought by Elsevier: we had subscribed to the Ideal Consortium which should assure us access from 1993 anwards, when it passed to Elsevier we lost 1993 and 1994.

Q. Do you require archival access as part of your license agreement for e-journals? If not, did you make a conscious decision not to require it, or has the issue just not come up?

A. When it is available we try to get it, but we can't always afford it. Also, we don't always negotiate the contracts.  Our library serves [another university's college].  As part of their consortia, we are included on most if not all of the [other university's] contracts.  This means we have resources available to our patrons that a library our size can't be expected to have. :)  So, we don't always have control over what we get.  However, [another] campus does want back files, so if they are available, we do usually get access.

A. We look for archival access as part of the licence agreement, and the standard contract used by the [national] licensing initiative includes an archiving clause. However, we would not refuse to sign a licence solely on the grounds that it denies archival access.

A. No, it is too time consuming and frustrating to try and include it into your license agreement with each journal.

A. No. We are usually focused on negotiating for a low price so do not push the archival access, though welcome it when it is part of the deal.

A. WE TEND TO PURCHASE E-JOURNALS THAT PROVIDE ARCHIVAL ACCESS AND REJECT THOSE THAT DON'T

A. Yes.

A. No.

A. We don't formally require it as a part of the license agreement (as in, if they don't include it in the license we won't sign off), but we always ask, usually by email, beforehand to find out what the publisher's policy is.

A. No, not a deal breaker.  There are some service, such as Nature and COB, where archival access is not offered at all.  We tend to assume we will always want those titles so we would never cancel and the issue is not likely to come up.

A. Always we require archival access

A. We don't require archival access in license agreements; I think we should make it a higher priority.

A. I learned the hard way, by loosing access to an e-journal that we canceled.  I now try to check that out and ask for changes in the license if possible.

A. The only archival access we have is through a Consortium of universities: we
have some contracts with various publishers (Elsevier, IoP, Kluwer) and they actually give the data to the consortium which assures us that we will have access in future as well, but this happens only with a few publishers. For many other publishers it just seems impossible for us to require any assurance. For publishers such as APS, for example we just trust that they will not cut off access...

Q. When subscribing to e-journals, do you also subscribe to the print version so as to have an archive of the title, in case you have to cancel the subscription?

A. No.  We have a severe shortage of shelf space.  I am in the middle of a project of weeding the collection down to the shelf availablity size. We do usage studies when we inventory, and then based on usage, core lists inclusion, [state] libraries holdings, local politics, and online availability we withdraw (or keep) print back files.

A. We would maintain a print and electronic subscription if it was cheaper or the same price than electronic access. However, this is a financial choice (in [this country, we have to pay tax] on electronic subscriptions but not print, and so a print plus online subscription can sometimes be the cheapest option). Where the print subscription adds substantially to the cost, we would not keep it for the sake of having an archive.

A. We usually subscribe to both print and electronic. However, we have discontinued some print journals subscription (yet retained the online subscription) to journals that we consistantly had difficulties receiving in print.

A. At this time we are still being cautious about cancelling print. Also, some of our agreements (e.g. Elsevier) link the online access to print retention.

A. SOME OF OUR PRINT JOURNALS ARE INDIVIDUAL SUBS THAT HAVE FREE E-ACCESS FOR THE DURATION OF THE SUB, SO THE ANSWER IS YES, BUT TO A MINIMUM NUMBER OF TITLES. WE MUCH PREFER [consortial] DEALS WHICH PROVIDE PERMANENT ARCHIVAL ACCESS, AND THEREFORE NO NEED TO BACK-UP SUB WITH PRINT COPY.

A. In the past, we always subscribed to the print (in addition to the online) for the archival access. However, this year (2005 subscription year) we made the bold step of cancelling our print and going e-only with most of our titles. We still kept print of some titles that have unreliable web sites. We finally gave up on worrying about archival access. We decided that regional libraries can worry about archiving. We are a small library and cannot worry about that.

A. If the e-journal subscription doesn't include a complete archive, we continue to subscribe in print.  We have a subscription to the ACS Journal Archive and to 15-17 specific titles, so we no longer subscribe to ACS journals in print.  For Elsevier ScienceDirect titles, we just started a subscription to a 5-year backfile - and we are continuing to subscribe to print in one location (of three in the Library Network) since after year 6, the print issues will be the only archive we will have.

A. No, we either subscribe to a print version which also gives the e-version or just to the electronic version. Having said that we get most of our e-journals via print subscriptions. Very few so far have been electronic only.

A. No.

A. We subscribe to the print version of a journal we've subscribed to electronically only when there is no archival access promised by the publisher.

A. Not as much as previously.  However, our library has identified a list of 500 journals that we consider Core Journals, and that we will commit to maintaining print subscriptions, binding, and will keep as a permanent archive. these are titles with the highest local use and the highest half-life in JCR.

A. We do usually have a print copy also but this is mostly due to the license terms: most of ours are "print + premium" or "with print".

A. Sometimes, not always.  It depends on the importance of the journal to us and whether or not we have archival rights.

A. All institutions [in the consortium] have cancelled the print subscriptions to the journals of the publishers that [the consortium] has a license agreement. Although we require archival access, still a [single] print copy is deposited [centrally].

A. I don't believe we ever had a policy of keeping the print to maintain an archive, but now we are increasingly shifting to electronic only subscriptions.

A. Yes!

A. Yes, for most of our subscriptions. [Due to high taxes on online only subscritions], this makes the online only cost more than the print+online! We have decided for the online only for few very "huge" titles of U.Chicago Press: we save the binding money, and we know that in few years all contents will be made freely available on ADS.

Q. Do you currently have archival access to e-journals you've cancelled? What format is the access -- e.g. online, CD-ROM, tapes? How's that working for you?

A. Online only.  If we don't have access to back files online, then we are dependant on Docline based and OCLC based Interlibrary loan.

A. In some cases, we have been able to keep online access to the years of a journal which we paid for. However, access tends to be unstable - we have had many instances where we've lost electronic access, and we've had to raise it with the publisher or subscription agent.

A. Yes through Ovid.

A. Some; Format online; Working OK

A. AT THIS STAGE, NOTHING HAS BEEN CANCELLED.

A. We have online archival access. We wouldn't want to bother with CD-ROMS, tapes, locally hosted servers, etc. It's too much trouble.

A. No.

A. Yes. It's all online access. Mostly it seems to be okay, though it does confuse some users when we still have archival access but no longer have the current issues. Some publishers seem a little vague about how long they will allow archival access after cancellation. For example I believe Blackwell guarantees 5 years access after cancellation but I've not seen it written down anywhere.

A. We're just in the process of switching many of our subscriptions to online-only, so I don't believe this has come up yet.

A. Yes, for some, but we have not cancelled that many titles.  So far, we have not had to go beyond online acces.  My guess is we would be very reluctant to do any type of in-house loading and maintenance of electronic backfiles.

A. We have not cancelled any journals but many journals have changed publishers so we have lost 281 of them since 1999. We have access though to all of the past content through either the publisher that sold the journal or the new publisher. In a couple of occasions that the publisher was not willing to give us access, they provided the content on CDs and we loaded it locally (centrally for [the consortium])

A. Yes.  Fine, on the Science Direct platform

A. There are many journals where we do maintain some type of archival access to titles we have cancelled, OVID titles in particular come to mind. When we cancel an electronic title, I attempt to find archival coverage through the vendor or by adding an open access version of a title. Generally, if we have archival coverage, it will be online.

A. No. Not yet.

A. There are some titles we have cancelled and for which we do not have access any more. We have CD for a few titles, but maybe in some years those CD will not be readable any more or we will have to keep old machines able to read them, who knows?

Q. If you completely lost access to any e-journals due to cancellation, did your patrons complain about the lack of archival access?

A. Only if it were a "key" journal.  [Another library] is just a couple of miles from us.  They are the biggest medical library in the [area].  (We are the second largest medical library and the only dental library.) We retain more back files of dental journals than medical journals because of the easier availability of access to the medical journals.  Until next July, we have had a courier who can go to [the other library] and photocopy the needed journal articles.  We are getting so many of our needed journals online now that we can no longer justify the courier.  Not enough business. :)

A. I believe our patrons are generally more interested in current issues than back issues, and I'm unaware of any instances where academic staff have complained if a journal was cancelled and we lost access. However, we check with the academic departments before switching to electronic only subscriptions, and so we shouldn't have switched any journals where academics feel very strongly about keeping access to back issues.

A. No they complain about current access.

A. Yes sometimes.

A. No. Most of our patrons are not knowledgeable enough to ask whether we retained archival access when current access was cancelled.

A. This hasn't happened to us yet.

A. This hasn't happened. Up to this point we have a print archive for any journals that we cancel.  In the case of ACS journals, we don't plan to cancel our subscription to the ACS Journal Archive.

A. Occasionally. It dosn't appear to be a big problem but again, in our case, we will mostly still have a print archive.

A. Not that I know of.

A. Not to my knowledge, but we have not had to cancel key titles.  In fact, we have gotten back more titles  thru the e-format that we had to cancel in print over the years, thanks to shared purchases.

A. We have not had any complaints that I know of(!) regarding e-journal back access to cancelled titles.

A. I don't believe we've had many complaints about a lack of archival access to titles we've cancelled.

A. No, not really.  These were not real popular journals here.  But now I am more aware of the problem.

A. Sure!

Q. Are you using LOCKSS? If so, is it hard to get vendors to allow you to use it to archive their content? Have you used it to access cancelled e-journals?

A. No

A. We have downloaded LOCKSS but we have not have any success so far. It seems that most publishers do not have any definite plans about LOCKSS yet.

A. We are using LOCKSS, and yes--it is very difficulty to get vendors to allow us to archive their content.  In fact, I had a conversation back in the fall with a VP for a smaller-but-prominent STM publisher, and I asked why they weren't using LOCKSS.  I was told that there was no "mandate from librarians" for this type of archival solution, so until we begin requiring it en masse, I doubt there will be much increase in the number of publishers allowing us permission to archive with LOCKSS.  I sent a message to ERIL-L re. this last fall, asking what others were doing and, if they weren't using LOCKSS, what other provisions they were making for archiving, and I received a shockingly small response.  I'm afraid that many librarians just aren't making this a big enough issue....  No, we haven't yet used it to access cancelled e-journals.

Q. I haven't seen much written on this topic recently. Have you seen any articles on archival/perpetual access that you would recommend?

A. Nicholas Lewis ‘Are we burning our boats?’ Survey on moving to electronic-only http://www.sconul.ac.uk/pubs_stats/newsletter/31/19.pdf

A. VAN DRIMMELEN, W.  2004.  Universal access through time: archiving
strategies for digital publications.  Libri, 54 (2), June, 98-103

A. I attended a presentation last week by Eileen Gifford Fenton of Ithaka (www.ithaka.org) about their Portico project. It's not fully launched yet, but appears to be a long term electronic archiving service which would allow libraries to maintain access to cancelled journals (provided the publishers were also members of the Portico service).

A. You might be interested to read about our recent Electronic Only Access to Journals Trial - please see our report at http://www.york.ac.uk/services/library/ejournal/summaryofreport2005.htm

General commments on this issue:

1. Providing e-access to as many titles as possible if of top priority - our patrons rely on e-access, and print has become invisible to many patrons.  We would prefer archival rights but we will go ahead without it if the material is important enough.  No considerations for keeping print based on archival rights are weighed, but we do have a set of 500 print journals that we will keep no matter what, which should help us in case of extreme budgetary issues in future.

2. You have brought up a very sore point. I feel that I am the only librarian in the world who is refusing to cancel journals in print in favour of electronic access until the archiving problem has been sold. In my view no archiving solution by the publisher is fullproof for obvious reasons. I am very taken by the LOCKSS solution but until all publishers go with it, it is also not a solution. I would do anything to force a publisher to go with LOCKSS - as a medical librarian I wrote to MEDLINE suggesting that they refuse to index any journal whose publisher does not go along woth LOCKSS. (If you are not in MEDLINE you might as well not exist). Apart from saying they didn't know much about LOCKSS and would look into it, I never heard any further. They had, however, concerned themselves with electronic-only journal archiving.

In my view, librarians seem to be washing their hands of a problem that not so long ago was considered their function automatically. Obviously it's easier to hang on to a journal for years if it's in print, but just because it isn't and it's difficult does not seem to me to make it any less our job. But no-one else, except for LOCKSS, seems to think like this. The result in our library is that we only have electronic access to journals which give free access with their print subscription - apart from a handful of expensive journals whose electronic access was not an expensive addition and so worthwhile (and under the table as far as management is concerned) and also New England Journal of Medicine which it was decided we could not live without (having tried to for a couple of months after which the Director of the hospital woke up).

I repeat - we have not cancelled a single print subscription in favour of electronic access.

It is possible I am particularly sensitive as our library lost serious money in the divine/Rowecom/Faxon fiasco. More than ever I need to know that what I have paid for is not going down the drain. But I don't think that this is the only reason for my way of thinking.

3. Personally, I hold the cynical view that any e-content would be lost on lapse of a subscription: even if a license guaranteed perpetual back access, I would doubt for how many years this would be maintained before there was a "policy change" etc. I think as an institution we rely on our e-journals more for current awareness, rather than assuming they will provide an archive. Most of ours are "with print" anyway so it has not yet become a key issue. However, I think you are right in highlighting it as it soon will be....

4. This topic is something I think about, but it is often really difficult when dealing with limited budgets. I think patrons and the public in general think of libraries as repositories for the ages (I know I did before getting into this profession) but many of us are just trying to get by, just getting access to what our patrons need today, and letting tomorrow worry about itself. Not a great outlook to have, and I hope that it is one that we change in the future.

5. Sadly, I don't feel like I have the time to stay on top of this like I should.  I just make changes to our catalog and our ejournal A-Z list and SFX Knowledgebase to remove the former content and call it done.  Nor does our collection management coordinator seem to pay particular attention to archival access.

6. I think this is one of the most important issues we're facing now. I really would like to see more libraries take a stand and demand access.

7. Until we can count on access to years of e-journals that we have paid for- similar to print journals - it makes it very difficult to go "all  electronic" in my mind.

I have some experience with an OVID consortium. We got good pricing and  easy access. We also wrote in the "archival access" would be available -  but as a third party - when a publisher can no longer give OVID access  because a journal has jumped publishers or the publisher wants to be the  sole provider - then OVID does not perform on that promise - for example -  after awhile Elsevier would no longer let OVID have Am J Medicine, Am J  Cardiology, Am J Surgery - I guess because they wanted to sell it via  Science Direct....

Elsevier addresses archival access in their license agreement - more than  most - and has options for providing it - but costs are involved if you  stop being a customer.

I'm also asking for reliable archival access from Blackwell, Nature, and J  Clinical Oncology right now....

Any pressure we can put on publishers and third parties to provide  perpetual access is a good idea! And why should we have to pay more to get  it? We already paid for those years of the journal and if they are saving  money by not sending us print - they should put that money into the  perpetual archives.

***************

Jennifer Watson
Electronic Services Librarian
University of Tennessee Health Science Center
877 Madison Avenue, Memphis, TN 38163
jwatso21@utmem.edu

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