APPENDIX 30
Memorandum from the Knowledge Management
Committee, West Dorset General Hospitals NHS Trust
1. The NHS has emphasised national efforts
to assist NHS researchers, teachers, students, and practitioners
in carrying out their work effectively. Much of this effort is
being made at an electronic level. Cost, access, marketability,
and quality of information/research are addressed in this brief
commentary.
2. COST
Big deal schemes, such as the NHS's National
Core Content, may help to respond to the high cost of journals
through the negotiation of discounts for mass purchase. Core content
is best suited to core areas common to all NHS Trusts, rather
than specialty areas within the NHS. The Core Content scheme comes
at too great a price, however. Selection policies for individual
titles and content have not been made clear. Simply stating that
the decisions were made by a committee, based on value for money,
is too vague. Local libraries have little or no influence over
the chosen vendors and content or terms of any licensing agreements.
Consequently, quality of library services to communities of users
tends to suffer.
3. Libraries are more reluctant to cancel
local subscriptions in favour of relying on nationally funded
journals, in the case of the Core Content, because the collection
has not stabilised. Continuity of local collections may suffer
if a national subscription to a locally desired journal is cancelled.
The Core Content, including software design, appears to still
be under development. This issue is probably the most damaging
to the use of libraries in the NHS. The vendors do not seem to
be held accountable for providing a finished product. Users have
difficulty navigating some of the databases and grow frustrated
when software features fail to function. Free or subsidised content
may be little better than no content when it is difficult to access
or does not provide quick, efficient access to useful information.
4. ACCESS
Licensing agreements and institutional subscriptions,
regardless of whether they are specific to an individual organisation
or to a consortium, tend to imply access for a particular audience.
NHS initiatives; such as reaching out to the public, supporting
prison health services, and considering subcontracting GP work
to private practices, may hamper effective reinforcement of license
agreements and copyright laws. Alternatively, libraries may require
additional funding to support expanding user groups.
5. The use of passwords may help protect
copyrighted materials and gather user statistics. This comes at
too great a sacrifice as passwords and user IDs set up barriers
for busy clinicians, researchers, and NHS staff. IP address-limited,
proxy server, or network-specific access is a better solution
to protect copyrighted or licensed materials.
6. It can be very frustrating to researchers
to search for articles in databases and journal sets that have
not been integrated. For example, journal titles for communities
of users should be in one searchable database. This may best be
accomplished at a local level because efforts at national or regional
integration interfere with integration of locally held resources,
especially in organisations where knowledge management (integration
of local documents and resources) is an issue. Alternatively,
a national integration mechanism would need to accommodate local
library holdings.
7. Archiving will become increasingly important
as web-based literature becomes the norm. Electronic information
is less stable than information published in hard copy. Dellavalle
et al (Science Vol 302, 31 October 2003: 787-788)
suggests that publishers refuse to accept articles for publication
that cite Internet-only references. This solves archival problems
only at one level. Access to electronic journals; previously,
but no longer subscribed; represents a sticky issue in licensing
agreements. When establishing licensing agreements, libraries
should always negotiate for continued access to issues of electronic
journals for which they have already paid. This may come in the
form of a CD.
8. COMPETITIVE
MARKET
Open access literature may someday drive down
the cost of journal subscriptions if open access journals or other
publishing mechanisms are recognised as having a high readership
compared to journals that charge for access. Maintaining a competitive
market will require greater status being given to publication
in a limited selection (eg, high readership or most frequently
cited in a discipline) of journals/publishing mechanisms. BioMedCentral
encourages competition by keeping track of how often particular
articles, rather than journals, are cited. Whilst this is helpful
to the reputations of individual authors, it may also be useful
to offer lists of most-cited journals to encourage open access
journals to compete with each other for readership, As most open
access literature appears to be funded by institutions, it will
be important to maintain a healthy supply of funding for research.
9. QUALITY/PEER
REVIEW
If the open access publisher states the criteria
reviewers have used and the criteria meets acceptable standards,
the quality of the information is more likely to be trustworthy
than peer-reviewed literature where review standards have not
been stated. This is true for more traditionally published literature
as well as open access. Some concern has been expressed regarding
the potential for drug companies to bias readers by funding research
and publication. Quality journals should routinely include statements
regarding any conflict of interest when publishing articles.
February 2004
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