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Perspectives for purchasing electronic information resources in Germany

Partner of this project are the university library of Potsdam and the university library of Frankfurt/Main with the support of the institute of economics esp. information systems in Frankfurt/Main. The project is financed by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). First research results you find here.

The initial goal of this project is to take stock of the current situation of purchasing electronic information resources and to evaluate present forms of purchasing e-resources (e-journals, Datababases, Fulltexts etc.) especially in Germany but also in selected neighbouring countries, like the Netherlands and Switzerland.
Not only in Germany there currently exist a consortial organisation for purchasing e-resources. They were founded with the idea, to bring more market power in the negotiations with commercial publishers. These consortia are purchasing e-journals in so called title-packages, means that these packages include the print version and the electronic version of the journal. The advantages and disadvantages will be evaluated in regard to new forms of purchasing electronic information resources; means according to the requests of the libraries and their costumers.
Following on from these results we develop alternative models for the purchasing of electronic information resources. One possibility is the flexibilisation, which should ensure a better response to costumer requests. Flexibilisation in this sense means to get free from bundling models of the commercial publishers, the separation from non-electronic and electronic resources and the possibility of pay-per-view.

The second point of focus is the description of initiatives and projects which show up new ways in scholarly communication by using the possibilities, which information and communication technologies are offering. These initiatives were predominantly founded in the USA, for example the electronic archive PubMedCentral or the digital repositories eScholarship and DSpace. In Germany there are also initiatives and projects, which are using the technology and the Internet, for example MathNet or PhysNet. The GAP (German Academic Publishers)- project – a cooperation between university presses, also fits in this context. We will give an overview about the objectives of these initiatives and projects and their impact in regard to developing new forms of scholarly communication in the future.

The leadership of the project in Potsdam has Dr.Andreas Degkwitz, scientific staff is Ms. Heike Andermann. The leadership in Frankfurt/Main has Mr. Berndt Dugall, scientific staff is Mr. Dr. Rainer B. Fladung.