From: "Nunnenmacher, Lothar" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 13:36:51 +0000
Dear David,
Thank you for the idea of directing our users to arXiv. At the moment
we direct them, among other possibilities, to Google Scholar as a
target in our link resolver. In principle, this should work to detect
an article at arXiv, but also at numerous other institutional or
personal archives, but we will have a look on arXiv as a separate
target.
Of course, the first place a researcher usually is looking for an
article is at the publisher. And in the case of APS we retained
subscriptions for 2 of the journals for one of our institutes (APS
insists on charging our institutes separately). These 2 subs got about
75 % of the usage of the APS journals in 2012 (and we pay about 25 %
of the price APS wanted for APS-ALL for all of our institutes.)
For the remaining 25 % of the usage, there are some possibilities, not
only arXiv:
- Some of the need will just disappear, if it is more than a click
away, because the researcher has downloaded the article already before
or an abstract is sufficient or... (to a certain degree usage is also
a function of availability, which also is an argument against tiering
by usage).
- As APS does not offer post-cancellation access (in contrast to
almost all other serious publishers), we bought the archive of the
journals 2001-2013. We host this locally and direct to it via the link
resolver. It might be a good idea anyway to direct the users to this
local source. As APS is tiering according to usage, you have to do
everything to reduce usage at their site ;-)
- Then there is the Google Scholar target in the link resolver.
- We are part of a library network and our researchers can order scans
from the print holdings in the network.
- We offer a document delivery for all the cases that are not covered
with the other possibilities.
All these options are provided via our linkresolver, in a hopefully
intuitive way:
http://www.lib4ri.ch/services/link-resolver.html
So, a subscription is always the best way to serve the users, but
there are numerous other possibilities to cover article requests, esp.
when a journal is not core, but in the long tail.
Kind regards,
Lothar Nunnenmacher
Dr. Lothar Nunnenmacher · Head of Lib4RI
Lib4RI - Library for the Research Institutes within the ETH Domain
Eawag, Empa, PSI & WSL
Überlandstrasse 133 · PO Box 611
8600 Dübendorf
Switzerland · www.lib4ri.ch
-----Original Message-----
From: David Groenewegen <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 12:01:10 +1100
Given that these are all Physics titles it would be really interesting
to know if arXiv becomes the default option for accessing these
articles in the future. Have you thought about trying to track that?
Are you planning to direct your users there as an option for accessing
articles?
David Groenewegen
On 17/03/2014 7:27 AM, LIBLICENSE wrote:
>
> From: "Nunnenmacher, Lothar" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 10:20:16 +0000
>
> Dear colleagues
>
> In the last summer, there was a discussion about the new APS tiering
> system here in the list, which is based solely on usage. It was
> discussed, whether this is fair and whether smaller institutions
> suffer most from it.
>
> Actually, we - the Library for the Research Institutes within the ETH
> domain - did suffer. And we draw consequences of this. We cut down the
> subscription from APS-ALL to two titles. Some of you might be
> interested in seeing our news on this topic, where we also explain,
> that tiering according to usage is a bad idea:
>
> http://www.lib4ri.ch/news.html++/year/2014/item/82/
>
> We did not have many reactions of our users, yet (which is a also good
> indicator for a reasonable decision), but at least one senior
> researcher will cease doing reviews for APS as long as he has no
> access to the journals. And the decision was discussed in several
> directorates within our research institutes.
>
> I know from similar problems in France and Belgium:
>
> http://www.mysciencework.com/news/11109/an-epidemic-of-journal-subscription-cancellations
>
> However, with a cursory search on the web I did not find any such news
> from UK, US or elsewhere. Was there no problem with these immense
> price increases?
>
> Lothar
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