About PCG

Issue 9: Winter 2008

Aggregators in Europe

An overview by Arend Küster Director - PCG Europe

The North American research appears to be largely mirrored across Europe.  Through PCG’s extensive Library Visit program over the past 10 years, we have collected data on the impact of aggregators in all regions of Europe.  Aggregator databases are widespread: midsize to smaller libraries are especially accessing journals through aggregators. They particularly appreciate the depth of content, the comparatively low cost as well as the convenience of accessing many journal titles through one common interface.  In developing regions or within libraries where the budget is tight, aggregators are particularly heavily used to access content which would not otherwise be available to them.  The embargo period therefore is often seen as a small price to pay for the ease of access.

The situation is different in small institutes more heavily focused on research, such as the Max Planck Institutes in Germany.  They rely essentially on selected journal content, and need to have access to research as soon after the publication as possible.  However, in many large universities, the aggregator databases coexist next to the current journal holdings. 

Conversationally, many libraries report that the acceptable length of the embargo depends on the individual journal title.  Generally, a six month embargo is accepted, whilst they would reconsider their decision to retain a title if the embargo is longer.  European librarians have reported that they tend to track usage of an aggregator database in general, but not broken down to individual titles.  Also, libraries tend not to catalogue journals within the library’s OPAC if they are available through an aggregator.  It would certainly be beneficial to be part of the library catalogues and statistics, to raise a journal’s profile – and make them much more visible to the users.  

It is difficult to track holdings to determine which libraries should be interested in a direct subscription.  This difficulty also has an impact when a publisher is negotiating consortia agreements:  participating libraries tend to look at their holdings and expect pricing to be based upon their existing holdings; yet the holdings might actually be lower than expected because most of the access is through an aggregator.  In some discussions, consortia negotiators will look at a journal’s embargo in an aggregated database, and if the period is not long enough (or there is no embargo at all) they will not consider this journal when working out an agreement with the publisher at the consortium level.

As with direct subscriptions, publishers need to create interest in their journals, and to clearly communicate archival policies.  Reaching out to the faculties will be another important factor in generating use and demand of current material. Any changes must be part of a wider marketing strategy, and ideally libraries would be informed of these changes with all routes of communication – such as direct mail, emails and telemarketing.  Only if librarians are informed about coverage changes might they consider adding the current material to their holdings.  Still, in making a great number of journals available, aggregators are an important platform to make content visible to a wide range of institutions.

Arend Küster, Director PCG Europe, has visited libraries all over Europe during the past years on behalf of PCG’s Publisher clients in Europe and in the US.  During these visits, we have been able to communicate publisher’s messages to libraries, whilst finding out country and region-specific issues within Libraries in Europe.