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The ASA is calling on all publishers to grace their electronic journals for the first two months of the year in an effort to prevent so many customers being denied access to their journals on January 1st each year even when their subscriptions have been renewed and pre-paid in good time. The ASA is of the opinion that keeping access open for the first two months of the subscription year would greatly reduce the number of claims and enquiries to publishers help desks and significantly improve customer service to agetns, intermediaries, librarians and users. To help in this the ASA has drafted a Code of Good Practice, which we hope will be useful as a guideline to publishers. We are also happy to list any publishers who grace their electronic journals on this website.
Electronic journals provide many advantages for libraries and users amongst which are speed, accessibility and convenience. To this we should as an industry be able to add a further advantage over print which is the assurance of continuity at renewal time since access is directly within the control of publishers and their intermediary service providers rather than reliant on postal services. Unfortunately this continuity of service has been lacking for electronic journals. Too often it is the case that an electronic journal subscription (with or without a print counterpart) has been renewed and pre-paid frequently by automated means and in good time, only for the subscriber to discover on January 1st that their access has been terminated. In an effort to reduce the number of instances where this happens the ASA calls on agents, intermediaries and publishers to implement a simple code of good practice to ensure such breakdowns in accessing electronic subscriptions are greatly reduced, thus increasing subscriber satisfaction. The ASA suggests that many of these instances would be eliminated if agents, publishers and intermediaries followed the following code of good practice.
Subscribers and subscription agents should renew subscriptions for electronic journals and electronic/print combination subscriptions in a timely manner before the end of the subscription period and by automated means wherever possible. Renewals should, unless other arrangements have been made, be prepaid with the orders being placed together or on specified dates that are mutually satisfactory to both publisher and agent. To assist in this, publishers should aim to produce price information by Aug 31 each year and to avoid subsequent changes.
Publishers should process the orders promptly so that the subscriptions can be entered before the end of the subscription period and in time to ensure continuity. However it is recognised that there are a large number of orders going through the system at this time, and it may not always be possible to complete all the order processing before the cut off deadline. Publishers are therefore urged to implement step 3 below.
In order to ensure that all subscribers continue to enjoy uninterrupted access to the electronic journals, publishers should not automatically terminate access on the last day of the subscription period. Rather they should wherever possible permit access to the electronic journals for a further 'grace' period of at least two months.
The ASA believes that a policy of gracing the first two months of electronic journal subscriptions will be very effective at reducing the number of subscription breakdowns, claims and queries relating to the renewal of electronic journals, with consequent savings in costly administration and improvements in customer service levels.
page last modified 18/06/02, © ASA