As e-books evolve to provide essential content for use in teaching, learning, and research, the UC Libraries seek to develop the marketplace in ways that support our core values and the university’s mission. We believe it is our responsibility to help shape the scholarly publishing landscape in ways that are responsive to the needs of our primary users and that enable us to be effective stewards of our libraries’ collections funds.
The following statements of principle apply these values to the e-book marketplace and reflect our priorities. The UC Libraries are prepared to work with publishers, aggregators, and others within the academic community to develop appropriate standards and best practices that implement these principles.
Content Supporting Research and Instruction
• Simultaneous access by an unlimited number of users at a reasonable cost
• Simultaneous availability of front list titles in both print and electronic formats
• Consistency of content between print and electronic books, including supplementary materials and quality of illustrations
Fair Use & Scholarly Communication
• Licensing terms that do not limit fair use, Section 108, and first sale doctrines under US copyright law, including use of e-book content in course reserves, course management systems, and course packs.
• The right to borrow and lend e-books via interlibrary loan in a manner analogous to the loan of physical books, in addition to other fee-based methods that may be available for limited lending between institutions
• Licenses that support ad hoc scholarly sharing with colleagues beyond the confines of the institution
Positive User Experience
• The ability to discover and access e-books in a variety of ways including through library catalogs, format- and discipline-specific public portals, and other search interfaces preferred by users
• Content accessible and portable across a variety of platforms and devices, and able to evolve with the emergence of new technologies.
• The ability to print, copy, save, and annotate e-book content efficiently and easily, and to export bibliographic information to citation management software
• Ease of navigation: the ability to preview content before downloading; navigate e-book content through hyperlinked tables of contents, indexes, and footnotes; and return to content via persistent URLs.
• ADA compliance in accordance with state and federal law.
Product Platforms
• Ability to migrate purchased and/or subscribed content between platforms, as platforms may evolve and change.
• If content purchased and/or licensed on one platform becomes available on other platforms, access to this content on all platforms will be provided at no additional charge.
• Confidentiality of user information. The UC Libraries fully endorse the California Reader Privacy Act (SB 602).
• Data to support resource management and assessment, including COUNTER-compliant usage statistics.
• Institutional branding features for proper attribution and user awareness.
• Routine notifications as content is added and changed.
Sustainable and fair business models
• Perpetual access to purchased content regardless of the life of the platform
• Archival rights retained, including the ability to archive content locally or through a third-party provider selected by the library.
• Reasonable and flexible pricing models that allow for the option to purchase discrete subject-based collections and/or individual titles, as opposed to a unitary bundle of products
• Minimal, or no, maintenance and/or access fees.
February 6, 2013 Version 1.4
Publisher and Co-Founder of PeerJ) as he provides an overview of the current landscape of Open Access publications; highlights some of the more innovative models that are being tested in the marketplace; talks about items such as article level metrics and open peer review, and shows how these new developments can benefit you as both a researcher and author.
