The journal supply chain efficiency improvement pilot: What's good, what's bad, what's missing?

Abstract

Early in 2006, parties involved in the service and supply of electronic journal content established the Journal Supply Chain Efficiency Improvement Pilot (JSCEIP), a pilot project to examine possible efficiency improvements in the supply of journals to libraries and other institutional subscribers. A primary consideration is the possible use of a standard institutional identifier by all parties in the journal supply chain in order to uniquely identify subscribers by their associated metadata. The forces of the Internet have changed the serials market. Contributing factors are the dynamics of subscribers switching from print to electronic, all the related new services required in terms of licensing, access and authentication, and involvement of new players such as aggregators and hosting platforms. Publishers are represented by Oxford University Press and Rockefeller, both hosted by HighWire Press (also a participant). Swets represents the subscription agent community; Ringgold contributes its institutional identification services. The pilot project focus initially was limited to UK subscribers, represented by the British Library. The pilot is now expanding to other countries and participants. The paper defines the supply chain and summarizes progress to date. © 2008 by The Haworth Press. All rights reserved.