The document outlines the efforts and challenges related to ensuring continuous access to e-journal articles in UK higher education institutions through initiatives like Jisc's safenet project. Key concerns include inconsistent licensing, unclear entitlement rights, and the need for effective management of perpetual access rights. Recommendations for academic libraries focus on supporting archiving organizations, enhancing awareness about preservation issues, and improving licensing practices for long-term access to digital scholarly materials.

1. 1
Improving Clarity around Continuing Access
Adam Rusbridge
EDINA, University of Edinburgh
8th February 2017

2. 2
Timelines for Continuing Access Support
• Short Term: Library Systems Management
• Medium Term: Managing Entitlement and Licences
• Long Term: Digital Preservation

3. 3
Jisc’s SafeNet project (2014– 2016)
Jisc invested in the SafeNet project to investigate foundations of national
e-journal archive infrastructure and mechanisms to deliver assured
continuity of access for UK HE institutions to paid-for e-journal articles.
• Foundations of national e-journal archive infrastructure
• Entitlement registry to record subscription history
• Better defined workflows to enable continuing access

4. 4
Ongoing Concerns around Continuing Access
• Jisc Library Support Services consultation
(2015, 73 library responses):
– 73% found their approach to ensuring perpetual
access to journals wholly or partly unsatisfactory
• SafeNet Survey
(2015, 37 library responses):
– 89% were quite or very concerned that access to
content could be lost following cancellation
– 97% reported that a UK-managed perpetual access
solution consisting of an archive of content and an
entitlement registry would be quite or very useful

5. 5
Challenges in Managing Continuing Access
• License clauses are inconsistent and
hard to manage
• Entitlement rights are unclear (to both
libraries & publishers; following transfer)
• Publishers vary how they implement PCA
• Significant opportunity for improvement
and simplication

6. 6
Current Assurances for Libraries
• Publishers and external service providers offer
PCA via their platforms
– Librarians avoid making claims due to effort required
– No local resilience when external services interrupted
– Limited capacity to deal with problems within library
community
– Subject to policy changes around access and pricing
(external to UK HE)

7. 7
Continuing Access Provisions in Licences
• Perpetual License
– Licensor grants to Licensee a nonexclusive, royalty-free, perpetual license to use any Licensed Materials that were
[accessible or subscribed to] during the term of this Agreement.
– [access shall be] substantially equivalent to the means by which access is provided under this Agreement.
• Archival Copy
– Licensor shall provide to Licensee upon request, or Licensee may create, one (1) copy of the entire set of Licensed
Materials to be maintained as an archival copy.
• Third Party Archiving Services
– Licensor and Licensee acknowledge that either party may engage the services of third-party trusted archives and/or
participate in collaborative archiving endeavors to exercise Licensee’s rights under this section of the Agreement.
• LibLicence Model Licence: http://liblicense.crl.edu/licensing-information/model-license/
• CRKN Model Licence: http://www.crkn-rcdr.ca/en/model-license
• CDL Model Licence: http://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2017/01/25/cdl-model-license-revised/
• Jisc Collections Model Licence: http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/model_licence

8. 8
Transfer and Acquisition of Titles
• Transfer or Acquisition of Titles.
– Licensor shall use best efforts to ensure that Licensee does not lose access to
content subject to this Agreement as a result of the transfer or acquisition.
– Any archival and perpetual access rights that have been granted shall be
honored, whether the Licensor is acting as the transferring or acquiring party.
– Code of Practice at: http://www.niso.org/workrooms/transfer/
– Reporting tool at: http://etas.jusp.mimas.ac.uk/
– Transfer listserv at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-
bin/webadmin?A0=TRANSFER

9. 9
A Challenge of Information Management
• Libraries now typically building e-connections instead of e-collections
• Continued access requires a clear view of:
– Licence (commitment to perpetual access and terms of use)
– Entitlement (titles and volumes to which you have those rights)
• Libraries will need to refer to this information in years to come:
• Good risk management to organise this information for long-term access

10. 10
Consultations with UK Institutions
• How are your journals licensed?
– Via big deals, via a subscription agent, direct with a publisher
• What do you subscribe to?
– Core + bundled via big deals, individual titles via agents & publishers
• How do you manage your subscription information?
– ERMs & Spreadsheets
• Any insights into your renewal workflow?
– Complexity around understanding rights
• Do you have confidence in your record keeping?
– Faith in records, but it depends how far back
– There will be effort involved to expose information…

11. 11
Infrastructure to Support Continuing Access
• Record of Licences and Rights
– Perpetual access clause referenced during acquisition, format change and cancellation process
– Annually, librarians spend resource finding and interpreting licences
• Record of Entitlement
– Librarians struggle to keep track of entitlement to purchased content
– Difficult to know what access a supplier should provide; what discovery system should contain
– Difficult to understand where access to a title comes from e.g. bundled, single sub., backfile
– Seeking view of entitlement without wading through original documents
• Archive Collections
– Librarians reassured knowing of collections of e-journals of strategic important
– Libraries must have confidence perpetual access will be implemented.
– Goal is to give users clear and easy continuing access to paid-for material

12. 12
• Reference tool for publisher licences,
using vocabulary to articulate terms
• Populated with 189 licences from 152
publishers
• Another 100 publishers where we have
not found a perpetual access policy
Investigating a Rights Registry

13. 13
Foundations of an Entitlement Registry
• Seeking a shared view between libraries and publishers
• Process to capture assertions, improve quality and support clarification
– “Assertions” as we know that historic record keeping is variable
– Pragmatic approach in context of an imperfect world
• Query mechanism to request further evidence
– Evidence of subscription: e.g. contracts, schedules, invoices, invoice numbers
• Interested in the quality of information and the mechanism to improve it

14. 14
Characteristics of Entitlement
• Minimise need for librarians to have
to clarify rights and negotiate access
• Provide an actionable source of
authorisation for an archival collection
– Historic aggregation (1999 – today)
– Capture during renewal (201X onwards)
• Acquisition exercises from a range of
sources to test data and acceptance
– Big Deal history, Transfer events, Export from
Subscription Agents & Library Systems, View
onto Publisher Data
Expression of
Rights
• Clause in License
• Terms and Conditions
• Written Confirmation
Title List • KBART Title List
• (Core Title List)
Evidence of
Subscription
• Invoice Number
• Purchase Order Number
• Dates of Coverage

15. 15
The Keepers Registry
Who is looking after what e-journals: http://thekeepers.org
• Discover information about title-level archiving
• Gather evidence for decisions
– Transition to e-only; Retention and
disposal of print collections.
• Generate coverage reports for lists of serials at
publisher and collection level.
• Understand the extent still "at risk of loss” and
segment responsibility for action.
• 50% increase since 2013
• STM journals are well archived
• Arts and Humanities are at greater risk
… at least 1 … 3 or more
Dec 2013 22,196 8,618
Nov 2014 26,195 9,656
Dec 2015 29,663 10,710
Dec 2016 33,711 12,644

16. 16
Review archival coverage of collections
Benefits of the Title List Comparison tool:
• Identify which titles are unpreserved
• Gather evidence to lobby for publisher participation
• Discuss coverage with agencies
• Dispose of print
• Discover other archiving agencies
P. Burnhill (2013) Tales from The Keepers Registry:
Serial Issues About Archiving & the Web. Serials Review 39 (1), 3–20.

17. 17
Working Together to Ensure the Future of the Digital Scholarly Record
• Collective action from archiving agencies
– Forming a supportive Keepers network to streamline workflows and tackle the long tail
– Workshops held in September 2015 and June 2016
• Co-authored a shared statement containing recommendations for actions
from key stakeholder groups
– http://thekeepers.blogs.edina.ac.uk/keepers-extra/ensuringthefuture
• Endorsed by a range of library organisations:
– IARLA : International Alliance of Research Library Associations (ARL, CARL, LIBER, RLUK, AUL)
– Ivy Plus Libraries Collections Group, USA
– + library groups in Canada, Australasia, South America and Europe

18. 18
Key Recommendations (for academic library sector)
1. Actively support at least one archiving organisation
2. Explicitly designate responsibility for preservation to staff
• Encourage library staff to be active in the archiving community
3. List priority titles & make these known to the Keepers
4. Make long-term access issues part of the licensing process
• Ask publishers for a digital preservation plan
• Explain why archiving is important to libraries in your region/subject
5. Increase awareness & understanding of the issues with your faculty staff and senior management
• Encourage Publishers & Publisher Associations to read and endorse the Keepers Statement
– Ask publishers to be vocal in their support of archiving agencies
– Ask publishers to double-check actual ingest of content via Keepers Registry

19. 19
Find out more:
http://thekeepers.org
http://safenet.blogs.edina.ac.uk
http://www.niso.org/workrooms/transfer
http://liblicense.crl.edu/licensing-information/model-license
http://thekeepers.blogs.edina.ac.uk/keepers-extra/ensuringthefuture
Thanks for listening
Adam Rusbridge, a.rusbridge@ed.ac.uk