They have also established a working relationship with Elsevier through which they will receive very current bibliographic information and abstracts for several hundred of their journals, and are working toward something similar with Springer-Verlag. They also are working toward providing links to e-journal text in their databases and expect to help libraries with licensing and access issues on the subscription side. In general, they realize they don't yet have much of our business, but want to be aggressive in changing that by reducing their own margins while maintaining income for publishers. IAC sees a rapidly changing landscape with respect to technology and intellectual property rights which raise a new set of issues. In terms of technology, they are investing heavily in hardware and software development, and in the ability to track and report on usage.
Pricing is based on whether simultaneous user or site licensing is required.
They consider unlimited access to be a misnomer, and encouraged consortia to consider simultaneous user pricing. Site license fees will typically have to be adjusted periodically on the basis of usage in any case, numbers of simultaneous users required can generally be predicted accurately and adjusted easily, fees are non-arbitrary and tied to actual usage and costs. Simultaneous user pricing will typically be somewhat lower. They also provide multiple database and volume discounts, and 2-year price guarantees. Innovative, OCLC, Ovid, and Silverplatter.