JSTOR DDA (Demand Driven Acquisition) Ebook Pilot, 2017-2018, extended to 2019

Introduction

In 2015, UC libraries ended a two year DDA pilot with university presses on the ProQuest ebrary platform. The pilot was successful in terms of usage and cost for participating campuses, but the short term loan (STL) pricing was unstable and numerous publishers withdrew from the model or increased their STL prices during the pilot. A summary of the pilot is linked here: Systemwide DDA (Demand Driven Acquisition) Pilot, 2013-2015. The UC collection officers approved a second two-year DDA ebook pilot with JSTOR which offers pricing and licensing terms that more closely align with systemwide ebook values UC Libraries Ebook Value Statement.

Benefits of JSTOR as an Ebook Provider

Books at JSTOR is an initiative to publish scholarly books online as part of JSTOR, one of the most well known and widely used scholarly resources. There are currently over 40,000 DRM free eBooks available from over 90 publishers; however,the UC pilot will include only the frontlists for 2017 and 2018.  Note: This was extended to include 2019.

Other considerations:

• Preservation is assured. Books are preserved in Portico (portico.org), ITHAKA’s digital preservation service.
• Books are integrated into the JSTOR platform, one of the most heavily used and valued online resources among faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates.
• Improved discoverability. Rich book metadata and JSTOR’s network of external linking partnerships makes books easy to find.
• Seamless integration with journals. JSTOR currently has more than 2 million book reviews and 600,000 citations on the platform. Books, journal articles, and reviews are cross-searchable and linked in ways that make online research faster, easier, and more effective.

There are also benefits to owning titles under JSTOR’s pricing model:

• Full-text online reading, chapter by chapter
• Downloads never expire with digital rights management (no DRM)
• Download individual book chapters as standard PDFs that are mobile compatible
• No download limits
• Copy and paste text from book pages
• Usage of the table of contents, front matter and back matter does not count towards the chapter views or downloads
• Behaves just like journal content on JSTOR

Details of the UC JSTOR Pilot

The pilot will begin in January 2017 and includes titles from approximately 90 publishers, mostly university presses, covering all disciplines. The platform chosen is JSTOR and the ebooks are fully integrated with the JSTOR journals. The pilot includes 2017, 2018, and 2019 content with over 3,000 titles available in the first year and 3,000 titles each additional year, discoverable through Melvyl and local OPACs. Titles are English-language only, but the task force will be monitoring turnaway data for non-English content to assess interest.

Free browsing will allow students and faculty to use the ebooks prior to a consortial purchase of the title. After 46 chapter views or 28 chapter downloads in a single title across the system, the next use will trigger a purchase with perpetual rights for all nine participating campuses (excluding UCSF). In May 2018, the triggers increased to 54 chapter views or 36 chapter downloads for DDA I (non-Project Muse titles) and 48 chapter views or 32 chapter downloads for DDA II (Project Muse titles). Threshold pricing changed from a $300 limit per title to $250 per title but went up to $400 for UC Press title in Fall 2018.

For users, the DDA pilot will be invisible and ‘behind the scenes’: titles in the DDA profile pool will look like holdings in local catalogs and user activity (free browsing, viewing pages, printing chapters, etc.) will happen in real time without intervention from library staff.

The pilot is funded for two years (January 2017-December 2018). Note: Due to having a balance in the deposit account, the pilot was extended to 2019.

Participating Publishers

The list of participating publishers is given here: List of Publishers.

Webinars for Library Staff

An informational webinar was given for UC staff in February 2017: JSTOR DDA Webinar for UC staff.

Campus Ordering Practices

The task force compiled a list of campus ordering practices to synchronize local acquisitions with the DDA pilot: JSTOR Ordering Practices.

Assessment

The task force submitted a draft six-month report with data graphs to SCLG in August 2017. There will be an annual report in February 2018 and a final assessment report in late 2018. There have been three additional reports: February 2018, July 2018, and November 2018.