Maney use Connect Collections to get MORE
At London Online last November, IngentaConnect launched a new service, Connect Collections, designed to support non-subscription-based licensing models for electronic content. Connect Collections are subsets of IngentaConnect's full journal list, usually themed by subject, and offered either by a single publisher or by a group of cooperating publishers. Each group of journals can be licensed as a collection, allowing specialist libraries to expand their holdings in specific subject areas at consortial prices.
Maney Publishing was the first publisher to take advantage of this new service, and worked closely with IngentaConnect product and engineering managers to develop the Connect Collections architecture. Here we present a case study written by Maney's Journals Sales Manager, Shelly Lynds. Shelly describes the process which led to implementing the Collections service – we would like to extend our thanks to Shelly for producing this piece, which we hope will be useful to publishers considering new ways to license their online content.
Introduction to Maney
Maney Publishing was founded in 1900, and has offices in Leeds and London in the UK, and in Boston, MA. We are committed to publishing journals in print and electronic formats that are international in scope and peer-reviewed. We are especially known for our titles in languages and literature, archaeology and history, and biomedical science; our list also includes a cluster in materials science and engineering.
How the relationship with Ingenta started
Our relationship with Ingenta started in 2001 when we placed 2 of our online journals with them. We chose Ingenta as they offered us the most flexible option for a small publisher at the time.
How Ingenta supported our online development
Since the relationship began, we have continually added titles to our list which Ingenta have managed. Ingenta also helped us with the transition to using CrossRef and with reference linking.
The MORE Collections: why?
Maney has recently introduced the MORE (Maney Online Research E-Journals) collections to meet clients’ needs for reducing the unit cost of information whilst at the same time expanding access to a wider range of electronic content. The MORE collections were created in March 2005 to offer instant online access to 60 journal titles from Maney Publishing to both existing and potential customers. The journals are available in three main subject areas of material science and engineering, history/humanities and healthcare and are available via the IngentaConnect platform.
The MORE Collections allow us to make our journal content available to customers interested in accessing electronic journals in those particular subject areas, and to encourage customers who already purchase a cluster of titles from Maney within these subject areas to up-grade their subscriptions to a wider electronic collection, or to the full collection for customers with multi-disciplinary requirements.
How?
The first thing to establish was which titles were going into which journal collection. Once we had decided on the content, the electronic journal collections were formulated in-house. As the majority of our electronic journals are available via Ingenta, it made sense to work with them to develop these new product bundles.
Initially, customers who purchased or upgraded to the electronic journal collections were given access to the whole range of titles via the IngentaConnect platform, via the usual access route of the journals being made available amongst all the other Ingenta hosted titles; this was adequate at the time. But as we were planning to add more electronic titles to our collections in 2006, and more customers were becoming aware of the electronic journal collections, we wanted to explore if we could group the titles together into actual standalone products that were more easily recognizable and accessible. We also felt that the facility to offer free trials to these electronic packages was necessary.
We approached Ingenta to determine if our identified standalone products and free trials could be developed. We explained what we were trying to achieve, and Ingenta were keen to look at the best way to help us with this new initiative. We then advised Ingenta of the list of titles per collection, and they began creating the electronic versions.
Why partner with Ingenta?
We chose Ingenta to help us with this project as we have a good current working relationship with them, they have proven technology and processes and they offered us control over all aspects of the initiative. They were also aware of our products and were able to offer us a consistent search interface, along with the facility to offer the free trials in the format and manner that we required for these products.
Furthermore, when we wanted to expand our material science and engineering collection to include 11 titles published by Multi-Science Publishing – to bring our customers an even larger collection of electronic journals within this field – Ingenta was able to quickly and easily help us with this joint initiative, as the Multi-Science titles were also hosted via IngentaConnect.
Conclusion
After much discussion and testing we were able to offer these new electronic collections to our customers via IngentaConnect in December 2005. The free trials will be ready to launch in March 2006. From working with Ingenta we are pleased to be able to offer our customers the following, whether they take one or more of the individual collections, or the full electronic journal collection:
- Current content and access to the archive material
- Unlimited concurrent access for institutions and their authorized users.
- Guaranteed quality content – the journals are peer reviewed and regularly cited in BIOSIS, MEDLINE, Science Citation Index, Materials Abstracts and Social Sciences Abstracts
- Archive of the material subscribed to during the period of the license in perpetuity
- Additional print copies of the electronic journals can be purchased at a 70% discount from the list price
- CrossRef linking to and from cited references
- COUNTER-compliant usage statistics
- Email alerting services
To obtain further detail of the MORE products, please visit http://www.maney.co.uk/files/Catalogues/MORE.pdf or contact Shelly Lynds on s.lynds@maney.co.uk