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The world wide web makes getting information easy. Jumping from one web
site to another is so effortless that we do stream of consciousness
clicking. We start out from one point and enter another, often without
realizing we have left the original site. This leads to misconceptions
about where we are getting the information and sometimes to the idea that
most information is freely available to everyone.
We pay for Campus Access
Take, for example, a PubMed search you run in your MCG office. When you
get to a good citation on your topic, you see an icon saying "Full
text article at www... ." You click on it and successfully get to the
full article. Is that because it is free to the world? Sometimes, but not
often. Most of the time, the Greenblatt Library paid an institutional fee
for that access.
It looks Free, But is it?
Among the requests we get in our Library Suggestion Box are purchasing
suggestions. Frequently they are requests for the purchase of specific
electronic journals or suites of journals from a publisher. In the past
five years, many observant users have informed us of free versions of
online materials so that we may cancel our subscriptions and redirect our
budget toward other titles. When we check out the facts, most of the time
free access is an illusion. Because most publishers use Internet Protocol
authentication for identifying valid users, any campus computer is allowed
to access registered Greenblatt Library journals. The journal appears free
because the information is accessible to the MCG community due to the
library subscription.
A Case in Point: BioMed Services and Science Direct Subscriptions
BioMedNet is a free website for biological medical researchers. Within
it, however, are links to expensive full text journals. When entering this
site from an MCG computer, users can open up full text articles to most
titles. The reason for this access is the ScienceDirect Georgia research
libraries consortium of which the Greenblatt Library is a collaborating
partner. Approximately 500 biomedical Elsevier subscriptions held by at
least one of the participating libraries is accessible from the five
Georgia research institutions. When a subscribed title is clicked, the
product seamlessly links to our registered ScienceDirect site.
Libraries are Customers too
Highwire Press is well-known by the biomedical community for putting
print journals on the web. When the Greenblatt Library registers for
electronic full text access to journals along with our institutional print
subscriptions, our name is linked to those publishers’ pages.
Unfortunately, our institution is listed as well on Highwire journals for
which we do not have full text rights. When the publisher assigns the
Library a customer number it is attributed to all of their publications.
However, we only have full text rights to the titles for which we pay.
This frequently causes confusion for libraries and users.
It was Free Yesterday
An increasing problem is the suspension of electronic journal access by
some publishers who had been providing it free with paid institutional
print subscriptions. Restoring electronic access can be a minimum ten
percent increase in cost for some titles. Some publishers are setting site
license rates at many times the cost of the institutional print
subscription for titles which charged no additional fee for electronic
access in previous years. This happened on March 1st of this year with the
journal, Nature, when the publisher suspended the single-user password
system for institutions.
Free Access can be Time - Dependent
Compounding the confusion and frustration, publishers are responding to
free access issues in a variety of ways. For example, many Highwire Press
publishers allow truly free access to their journals after a given time.
Suppose a user gets into a year 2000 full text journal article from his
MCG office. He/she tries to get into the same journal title for 2001and is
denied access. This is usually because of an unsubscribed journal’s
electronic embargo on recently published material. Another approach is to
offer current year only free. Academic Press made three of its biomedical
journals free for 2001, but no past years are free. Many other publishers
provide full text articles, sample, and special issues randomly, while the
full content of their online publications are accessible with a paid
subscription.
We are Stewards
Library print subscriptions offer guaranteed access to the recent and
distant past. Most online publishers are either not archiving or
struggling with providing it. The Library applies print and electronic use
statistics, national trends, peer institutions, citation patterns and the
institutional mission statement to our purchasing decisions on supporting
data. We also consider our responsibility as the only public health
sciences library in Georgia.
We welcome Library suggestions because they show evidence of needs we
would not recognize in other ways. Sometimes they identify collection
needs and sometimes they point out our need to communicate services we
provide.
More Journal in Full Text
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