From: "HUDSON, Patricia" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2016 14:19:30 +0000

Hello all,

Just a brief clarification. The letter Andrea and Marcia received is
part of a pilot program that OUP is rolling out in a few key regions
to customers who renew single, calendar-year subscriptions directly
through the publisher rather than through a subscription agent or
through a collection deal. Please rest assured that serials
subscriptions managed through an agent will proceed as usual, and our
journals collection agreements should continue to be negotiated
directly or through a consortium, where applicable. We believe a few
accounts who have subscriptions to journals transferring to us in 2017
were flagged as direct subscriptions by the previous publisher and
thus received a notice from OUP. I apologize for any confusion. There
should be no issue with your managing all your subscriptions through
your agent.

While this program is only relevant to a relatively small group of our
subscribers, it is those direct subscriptions where we are looking for
ways to ensure no loss of access (or, in the case of print, missed
print issues) as well as to decrease the administrative burden which
tends to contribute to late renewals.  Regarding the automatic renewal
change, it is actually something we have had in place for more than a
decade with our online database subscription products, without any
negative drawbacks for our library customers. It has been a far more
efficient process, since the vast majority of all of our subscriptions
do renew.  In considering this change, we are committed to making sure
that the automatic renewals pose no risk to the library. If a direct
subscriber doesn't want to renew, they can simply let us know they are
cancelling.

We will make sure that our future correspondence is more clear and
that this process will not be relevant to those either renewing or
cancelling through a subscription agent. If anyone has any questions
about their own subscriptions, feel free to e-mail me directly below,
speak to your sales representative, or contact our customer services
at [log in to unmask] in North and South America, or
[log in to unmask] for the rest of the world.

Tricia Hudson

Patricia Bowers Hudson | Associate Director of Institutional Marketing
Oxford University Press | 2001 Evans Road | Cary, NC 27513 | USA
+1 919 677 0977 Ext. 5247
[log in to unmask]


-----Original Message-----
From: Marcia Thomas <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2016 10:21:40 -0500

Yes, we also just now received the notice from Oxford, and we are in
exactly the same situation regarding our license with OUP and with
using a subscription agent.  We are in the process of sending a query
to Ebsco's customer service rep asking how they will deal with this
change.  I also noticed this statement in the letter: "In addition,
only subscriptions running on a calendar year (January to December)
basis will be automatically renewed."  I'm not sure how to interpret
what that means, but I know we do have a number of subscriptions with
a different start date.

Marcia Thomas
Collections Librarian
Illinois Wesleyan University
309-556-3808
[log in to unmask]

On Tue, Oct 4, 2016 at 3:51 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: Andrea Imre <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue, Oct 4, 2016 at 12:35 PM
>
> Hello,
>
> My library purchases Oxford Univ Press online journals as individual
> subscriptions and we pay for those via a subscription agent. Each year
> we activate our subscriptions by agreeing to a click-through license,
> or sometimes they are activated by pub as soon as they processed our
> payments.  (the license language is
> https://www.oxfordjournals.org/resource/pdf/instsitelicence.pdf ).
> Note that there is no mention of an automatic renewal nor is there a
> mention of a 30-day cancellation notice in the license.
>
> Last week I received a letter from OUP informing us that from Jan.
> 2017 OUP is moving to an automatic renewal system for online journal
> subscriptions to “save time and guarantee continuous access to your
> chosen titles.”  The process is described as follows:
>
> “In September you will receive an invoice from us for renewal of your
> online subscriptions for 2017.  You must contact us by December 1st
> 2016 to cancel any subscriptions.  Any subscriptions you don’t cancel
> will automatically renew on January 1st 2017.” (emphasis added)
>
> I was perfectly happy with the system where we pay a subscription fee
> for an individual journal subscription and publisher’s receipt of our
> subscription fee is the indication of our intent to renew. The lack of
> a cancellation notice should not be interpreted as intent to renew.
> There are way too many ways this new proposed process can go wrong
> (e.g. account mix ups, missed communications, delays in receiving
> cancellation notices, etc.) resulting in unwanted charges for the
> library.
>
> Have you all seen this notice? The letter I received from OUP was
> dated Sept 2 but I received it on Sept 30 only.
>
> My subscription agent has not received a copy of this notice from OUP.
> Note that we have not received the list of subscriptions in September
> as indicated in the letter either.
>
> Is anyone else as concerned about this proposed process as I am?
>
> Andrea
>
> ********************************
>
> Andrea Imre
> Electronic Resources Librarian
> Southern Illinois University Carbondale Morris Library - MC6632
> 605 Agriculture Dr
> Carbondale, IL 62901
> phone: 618-453-4339
> fax:  618-453-3452
> e-mail: [log in to unmask]