INFORUM 2011

Economic Aspects of Access to Scientific Information – Subscription Model or Individual Payments

Author

Jaroslav Šilhánek, Institute of Chemical Technology, Prague, Czech Republic

Co-authors

Ludmila Zetková, Institute of Chemical Technology, Prague - Central Library, Czech Republic

Documents to download

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Abstract

Economic aspects of acquisition of scientific information were and still are based mainly on choice between preliminary payment in form of subscription, which is still common for scientific journals, and individual payment typical for books. Besides of economical aspects the question to be sure that library will get really full set of published issues for archive purposes of a given journal title also plays very important role. Switch from printed to electronic forms opened more options which are based just on this very volatile and easily deliverable physical form. One of the first option was consortial access for enormous number or titles or so called „big deals“, which is now in progress for electronic books. This resulted in undoubtedly huge increase and effectiveness of information usage which would be unthinkable for printed material due to its still growing total amount. On the other hand it is clear that the individual titles in consortial packages could not be evenly used which resulted in dubiousness about its economic advantage. Simultaneously to get very fast and easy access just to the individual peace of information is opened with appropriate individual payment also just for single document. Attempt to solve these questions which look like pure economical calculation opens many other questions which have to be discussed in wide consequences and context. This paper attempts to open besides economical questions also other aspects of acquisition of scientific information which would very probably substantially influences next development.

Author's professional CV

After graduation from the Prague Institute of Chemical Technology he obtained his PhD in organic technology from the same institution in 1968. Starting carrier as an organic chemist mostly in areas of pesticides and organic sulphur compounds chemistry he has been steadily engaged in the fields of chemical information and particularly in its electronic forms. He wrote a couple of teaching text on this subject and he is lecturing courses on Chemical Informatics on the Institute of Chemical Technology in Prague.

He has about 70 papers, patents and review papers in local and international journals and gave a couple of plenary lectures on Online Meeting in London (1997, 1999) as well as at the largest chemical congress Achema in Frankfurt am Main on the subject of management of chemical information and searching problems. He is also author of a couple of projects on promotion of widespread access to the most important chemical databases for all chemical or natural science faculties in the Czech Republic.