Libraries

Information is the fuel that keeps science and research running – and electronic databases are some of the most important filling stations. National licences exist so that as many people as possible can tap into these resources.

The German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft – DFG) has invested more than 100 million euros in improving the supply of specialist information in electronic format; by doing so, it has filled a major gap in access to these resources.

The principle of a national licence is both simple and broad in scope: a single licence is acquired for the use of an electronic database, providing access for an entire country and its academics. This means that individual universities do not have to enter into negotiations with publishers and acquire licences themselves at great expense.

Free access to databases

Eight libraries in Germany have taken on the task of acquiring the licences centrally. The libraries concerned represent special subject collections and have a wealth of experience in licence negotiations. These special collections libraries are Berlin State Library, the Johann Christian Senckenberg University Library in Frankfurt am Main, Göttingen State and University Library, the Hanover-based German National Library of Science and Technology, the German National Library of Economics in Kiel, Cologne University and City Library, the German National Library of Medicine, also in Cologne, and the Bavarian State Library in Munich.

They have acquired around 160 national licences, giving access to information sites such as Periodicals Index Online. Here, researchers can access articles published in some 4,800 journals relating to the arts, humanities and social sciences. Thanks to the acquisition of a national licence, English scholars also have free access to the world’s most comprehensive collection of English language women's literature of the Romantic age, for example. National licences have also been acquired for the Forestry Compendium, a global compilation of knowledge on forestry for biologists, and for the interdisciplinary World Biographical Information System, which provides short biographical information on several million people from reference works written since the 16th century to the start of the 21st century.

Full funding

At first, there was considerable ground to make up in the acquisition of national licences, so the German Research Foundation has provided 100 per cent funding for the acquisition of national licences since 2004. “It’s about improving the supply across the board”, says Anne Lipp, describing the main purpose of national licences. Lipp is the Head of Scientific Library Services and Information Systems (LIS) at the German Research Foundation.

Once a national licence has been acquired for a database, all scholars and students in the country can use the resources, either via their university or college networks or, indeed, from home. Private individuals who are not affiliated to a university or research institution may also register for individual access to the databases in most cases. The only prerequisite is that they must be resident in Germany. A practical example from the field of German studies illustrates the cost savings that national licences bring for users: a six-page essay about the writer Irmtraud Morgner (1933–1990) costs 34 euros to download from the publisher’s website. If obtained under a national licence, it is free of charge.

The participatory model

The 160 or so national licences purchased by the German Research Foundation between 2004 and 2010 cost around 110 million euros. From 2011, however, the Foundation, whose purpose is to promote science and research, will only fund around 25 per cent of the costs: “The rest will come from the libraries wishing to obtain access to this content”, says Anne Lipp. For the first year or two, access to the products purchased with a national licence will be restricted to those institutions which have made a financial contribution. Once this restricted period – known as the “moving wall” – elapses, open access is granted and it becomes a “national” licence in the true sense.

“The new funding model takes account of the fact that there is no longer such a need to “catch up” compared with 2004, when national licences were first introduced”, Anne Lipp explains. The licence negotiations will still be conducted by the eight special collections libraries. This new model was developed in conjunction with the Alliance of German Science Organisations (Allianz der deutschen Wissenschaftsorganisationen). Through the Alliance’s Priority Initiative “Digital Information”, the member institutions strive to provide broad access to digital publications, data and sources.

Improving open access

Besides the primary purpose of the major national licence initiative, which is to improve access on a broad basis, there are also “secondary goals” for the German Research Foundation, as Anne Lipp explains. The first is to improve open access, because the acquisition of licences for periodicals also means that authors can “opt to add the articles published there to a free repository of their choice”, i.e. a server or specialist portal.

And secondly, there is the issue of data storage: “With the funding from the German Research Foundation, the right to have the content supplied in a physical form is also acquired.” For example, if a library otherwise obtains a licence for an electronic periodical from a publishing house, this does not give it the right to store the data on its server. “But a national licence is different: it gives us a hosting right as well.” That being the case, no other access interfaces are offered, and the research is conducted, as before, via the publishers’ servers. However, if the flow of “fuel” from these sources is ever interrupted for a time, it is good to know that the libraries’ tanks are full.