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Site licence concept: a view of the UK Pilot Site Licence Initiative
Author(s) -
Carter Penny
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
learned publishing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.06
H-Index - 34
eISSN - 1741-4857
pISSN - 0953-1513
DOI - 10.1087/09531519750146798
Subject(s) - citation , library science , penny , sociology , media studies , computer science , operations research , history , engineering , archaeology
he concept of site licensing has gone hand in hand with developments in electronic publishing. In May 1995, when Cambridge University Press was invited to participate in the UK Pilot Site Licence Initiative (PSLI), we, like the majority of publishers worldwide, were in the early stages of electronic development. We had an ambitious technical programme centring on our US-based journal Protein Science, but we had only just begun to explore strategies for delivery and pricing. Protein Science is the journal of the Protein Society and thus we were aware from the beginning of the need to collaborate closely with journal proprietors on the wide variety of issues raised by electronic publication. The PSLI time-scale proposed, one month, was, we concluded, simply too short for us to consult properly about a scheme with such radical implications, which can now be seen as reflecting a transformation of the traditional serials publishing industry. By not participating in the scheme a publisher has the benefits of hindsight and others’ experience, but this paper presents some personal observations rather than the views of Cambridge University Press.