News from the Joint Information Systems Committee

Citation

(2003), "News from the Joint Information Systems Committee", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 37 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/prog.2003.28037dab.011

News from the Joint Information Systems Committee

News from the Joint Information Systems Committee

(a) JISC announces its new partner for NESLi2

The UK’s Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has announced that a new company, Content Complete Ltd, will be its Negotiation Agent for NESLi2, the electronic journals licensing initiative for higher and further education institutions, following a tender and selection process (www.nesli.ac.uk).

The co-founder of Content Complete Ltd, Albert Prior, will be known to many publishers and librarians the world over, having worked for Swets and Zeitlinger in a number of senior roles for 25 years. Paul Harwood, currently managing director of Swets Blackwell Ltd in the UK, will also be part of the new negotiating team. Helping to maintain continuity with JISC’s journals licensing activities over the last five years, will be Manchester Information Service (MIMAS) which is partnering Content Complete Ltd in delivering the service. MIMAS will be providing the help-desk and communications functions of NESLi2.

Dr Tom Graham, chair of the JISC’s Journals Working Group and librarian at Newcastle University, said:

The JISC is delighted that it has been able to appoint Content Complete Ltd as its negotiation agent for electronic journal content on behalf of UK Higher and Further Education, under the NESLi2 service. The Journals Working Group undertook a thorough review of the work carried out under the original NESLI initiative, and the new service is specifically designed to build on the lessons of that experience. We believe that the experience brought together in this company will provide a particularly strong partner in the work of negotiating on behalf of these communities, and in providing a good service to libraries and their users.

NESLi2 will be building on the experiences of several years of licensing of scholarly journals in the UK on behalf of the academic and research communities. The original NESLI was one of the first programmes internationally to promote actively and encourage use of a model licence and this will again be a key feature of the successor scheme.

(b) UK leads world in publishing revolution to provide open access to scientific research

More than 80,000 biology and medical researchers working at UK universities can now share their research findings freely with fellow researchers, funding bodies, students, journalists, and the general public world-wide. Making the results of science and medical research openly available will aid the global advancement of science and healthcare. Publishing in freely accessible online journals will also make the UK higher education system more cost-effective, by reducing the amount of money spent on journal subscriptions.

The landmark deal announced by the JISC and open access publisher BioMed Central places the UK at the forefront of the drive to make scientific research freely available on the Internet. From July 2003 article processing charges were waived for all UK higher education staff when publishing in any of BioMed Central’s 90+ peer-reviewed journals in which all research content is freely accessible. Dr Alicia Wise, head of development at JISC, explained the commitment by JISC to fund open access publishing for the entire UK Higher Education community:

This ground-breaking deal represents a major shift in the way that research is undertaken and its outputs published and shared. The implications for research and for our educational institutions beyond the health and medical field are immense.

BioMed Central now has more members in the UK than in any other country. The UK is a major contributor to the global advance of knowledge. With just 1 per cent of the world’s population, Britain funds 4.5 per cent of all scientific research, and produces 8.5 per cent of the research articles that are published world-wide. BioMed Central and JISC look forward to seeing a fast-increasing proportion of these articles published with open access, for the benefit of science and society at large.

For further information please contact: Lorraine Estelle, Collections Team Manager, JISC, King’s College London, Strand Bridge House, 138-142 The Strand, London WC2R 1HH, UK. Tel: +44 (0) 20 7848 2563; Fax: +44 (0) 20 7848 2939; E-mail: l.estelle@kcl.ac.uk; URL www.jisc.ac.uk