Electronic Information Resource Optimisation in Academic Libraries: A Comparative Study on Licensing Provision of Commercial Publisher

Abstract

<p>Electronic information resources are increasingly become an important component of the collection-building activities of libraries. This paper attempts to understand how far the licenses of commercial publishers support resource optimisation in general and what other important issues that are usually ignored by publishers, knowingly or unknowingly, but are essential for better resource optimisation. Five international publishers namely Elsevier, EBSCO, Sage, Springer, and Taylor & Francis were identified and analysed their agreements that are available in public domain with some model agreements like Liblicense model and model license developed by John Cox Associate. Study indicates that core part of the negotiations still remain price, IP access, display, ILL/document supply, etc. while important issues like perpetual access, archiving, self-archiving, copy of individual articles and share the same for non-commercial use by authorised users were minor issues of the contract. Furthermore, most of the obligations of the publishers that are identified as core issues in Liblicense model are also absent in commercial publishers’ license. A greater awareness of this to library managers is essential. They must be acquainted with the clause of the license agreement of commercial publishers and must negotiate to that extent so that the access should be uninterrupted.</p>