TERMS: Techniques for ER Management

TERMS: Techniques for electronic resource management

5. Annual review
 
In times of fiscal constraint it is very important to make sure all resources are providing value for money. This goes for all resources, whether established or recent acquisitions. Value for money can be calculated in a number of ways, the most obvious being cost per downloads, other factors should be taken into account, such as:

• Renewal date
• Usage
• Access queries
• License changes
• Pricing model
• % price increase
• Currency exchange rate
• Transferred/added titles
• Coverage changes
• Cancellation policy

A number of these factors will now be looked at in more depth. 

5.1 Scheduling 

As noted in 2.2, it is vital to check the notice period required for any subscription, which may be as much as 3 months for a cancellation notice1.
An added complication for e-resources is that unlike serials, renewals can take place all through the year. If they are not noted in advance, or set up in an ERM, some possible cancellations may be missed or vital resources may cease, which will result in complaints from users. 

If you subscribe to a large number of different e-resources, it may prove easier to review them in batches, e.g. every quarter. If your financial year runs from August to July, then group the renewals into the following periods:

• August-October
• November-January
• February-April
• May-July

In order to beat the cancellation clauses, it is best to consider each quarter two months in advance, e.g. look at February-May in December. 
Around February/March it is also advisable to schedule a planning meeting with each subject team to discuss all e-resources that they are responsible for. Use this meeting to discuss the previous year’s usage and any comments that may have arisen about the resources. This can be of great help in the annual planning process as ‘at risk’ resources can be identified at this stage and flagged for possible cancellation or further review at the time of renewal.
 
5.2 Confirm costs and any new terms and conditions
 
Many vendors will send you a statement of account many months in advance of the renewal date, however, if this has not happened you should contact the vendor at the appropriate time, once you have decided on a schedule for the review of e-resources.
If the resource is a recent subscription, you may wish to contact the vendor for other pricing options, e.g. to convert up from simultaneous users to a site license or possibly to downsize the subscription. In order to access the need for this you should consult your usage statistics (see 5.3). 
Signing up for a multiyear deal may mean that you do not have to check the costs of the resource, however, some vendors require you to sign a new contract each year. Check this against your existing contract as unwanted changes often creep in. 

5.3 Usage statistics 

There is a lot of information about usage statistics2, 3 and while it should never be the only reason to cancel a resource, it can certainly be very influential in deciding if a resource could be reviewed and flagged for possible cancelled, if more training is necessary or if the number of simultaneous users should be increased/decreased.
Always make sure when negotiating a contract that the vendor can provide COUNTER compliant usage data. A list of COUNTER compliant vendors can be found on the COUNTER website4 – if the vendor is not listed here then they are not compliant – even if they say they are!  

In deciding about the number of simultaneous users, check if the resource can give you information on turnaways – the number of users who could not get access to the resource as they exceeded the number of simultaneous users. If turnaways are high, you may also see overall usage drop as users become put off by the lack of access.

Many smaller vendors, or those whose primary focus is on the corporate market are not COUNTER compliant, if they will not agree to go through the process and you are still happy to subscribe, you should ensure that they agree to provide usage statistics – even if this is on request or monthly by email. Vendors who refuse to do this are putting their subscriptions at risk. 

Usage reports that record ‘hits’ on a resource can be misleading and do not always reflect real usage. However, if you have both COUNTER data and ‘hits’ you may see some interesting results especially for full text resources, e.g. if hits are high but COUNTER stats are low there maybe an issue. From this you could assume that although ‘well used’ the COUNTER report indicates that users did not actually find the material useful, or, that there could be a linking problem and that users where not getting to the full text. 

5.4 Report to staff 

It is not enough to compile a report of raw data on cost, usage and possible licence changes and expect busy staff to be able to process this information quickly. There are a number of commercial packages that can assist in the compiling of reports, such as 360 COUNTER from Serials Solutions5, ScholarlyStats from Swets6 or EBSCONET Usage Consolidation from EBSCO7 However, manipulation of the data in Excel requires only rudimentary knowledge. 
An example of a basic report for an A&I resource is included as Appendix 1, the idea behind the report is to give subject teams a background to the usage of the resource and to check key performance indicators in order to allow them to make quick and accurate decisions on what to do next. 

For other resources, such as eBooks, it may be more important to show a comparison between different aggregators and purchased items. This can often be difficult as although many vendors publish Book Report 1 (BR1) and Book Report 2 (BR2) reports, they rarely make both available, this makes comparison very difficult. In the UK, the annual SCONUL statistics return8 recommends that the number of title requests (BR1) are multiplied by 5.4, to estimate the number of section requests (BR2). 

Another recent implementation in the UK is the JISC Journal Usage Statistics Portal (JUSP)9,which ‘provides a “one-stop shop” for libraries to view, download and analyse their usage reports from NESLi2 publishers’10 There are now over 100 libraries in the UK benefitting from this resource. A major benefit is that the JUSP can combine usage reports from journals that are available on multiple platforms, this can be a major headache when trying to accurate compile reports, another benefit of the JUSP is that it can automate the removal of journal archive usage reports from current subscriptions. This makes reporting on journal value for money easier. 

Reporting on return on investment of archive packages and other one off purchases can also be built into the annual review. Although these resources may have been the result of a one off purchase, they still need to be reviewed annually to check the return on investment in order to see how long it takes for the archive to match the subscription cost per download. 

5.5 Make your choice 

Although it is essential to review all resources, it is often a fairly straightforward to renew many resources at a glance, however the usage graph and key performance indicators shown in Appendix 1 can highlight some resources where further investigation may be needed. 

It is always useful to re-assess the market even for ‘essential’ resources, for example, the resource in the Appendix looks like a simple renewal, but what if a rival vendor had started to host the resource on a platform that proved more popular with the users? Or a consortia deal had been announced during the previous year resulting in potential cost savings?  Either example may improve the user experience or reduce expenditure so should be investigated during the review period. Use some of the examples outlined above to help draw your own conclusions for each resource. 

5.6 Renegotiation/cancellation 

Often, if a decision is made to cancel the resource or to review it for a further year many vendors will be open to negotiation. They may be prepared to drop the price for one year while you try to build usage. 

In addition, there may be other monies available from Faculty or research in order to share the costs – negotiation does not just have to be with the vendor!
The next phase is then to renew or replace…

References

1. SERU Guidelines: http://www.niso.org/workrooms/seru 

2. Conyers, A, Usage statistics and online behaviour (2) In: E-Resources Management Handbook. UKSG. ISBN 978-0-9552448-0-3 http://uksg.metapress.com/openurl.asp?genre=article&id=doi:10.1629/9552448-0-3.2.2

3. Shepherd , P, COUNTER: current developments and future plans In: E-Resources Management Handbook. UKSG. ISBN 978-0-9552448-0-3 http://uksg.metapress.com/openurl.asp?genre=article&id=doi:10.1629/9552448-0-3.23.1 

4. COUNTER http://www.projectcounter.org/

5. 360 COUNTER http://www.serialssolutions.com/management/360-counter/

6. ScholarlyStats https://www.scholarlystats.com/sstats/default.htm

7. EBSCONET Usage Consolidation http://www2.ebsco.com/en-us/Solutions/completemanagement/Pages/CMSlearnmore.aspx

8. SCONUL statistics http://www.sconul.ac.uk/statistics/

9 Journal Usage Statistics Portal (JUSP) http://jusp.mimas.ac.uk/

10. NESLi2 http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/nesli2/