Challenges to Licensing – MD Consult Update
The vast majority of publishers and vendors who enter into negotiations with CDL demonstrate an open-minded, flexible approach and are more than willing to reach common ground in pricing and licensing terms. It is rare that after a long period of discussion, data analysis and clear articulation of issues important to UC libraries, the publisher will not work toward a compromise. In those cases, CDL posts a public entry for the UC community on the Challenges to Licensing webpage in order to explain the lack of availability of the publisher’s scholarly content. The latest entry on the Challenges webpage relates to a health care product from Elsevier’s Clinical Solutions called ClinicalKey® which was to be a replacement for MD Consult.
After a year of careful consideration and analysis, the University of California Libraries decided not to subscribe to ClinicalKey in 2015. While many of the resources on the new CK platform might be useful to UC faculty and students, our strong reservations about its extremely high cost, the inflexible content model and lack of perpetual access to content have ultimately forced us to turn away from the deal. The UC health selectors are collaborating on alternative journals and books to replace MD Consult. Contact your campus librarians for access to those resources on your campus.
As with all such issues, CDL and the UC Libraries remain open to working with publishers to find appropriate solutions that meet the scholarly and educational needs of the UC community.