| [AAP] |
[Joint Information Systems Committee]
|
1. This request for proposals describes a pilot project for delivery of articles in the electronic environment, under conditions similar to "inter-library loan", as agreed in outline in discussions between representatives of the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the Publishers Association (PA). JISC has agreed funding for a pilot project, which if successful could be extended to become a fully functional system as a commercial venture. The proposal to JISC is Annex A to this RfP. An independent evaluation is also being funded, as well as an independent architectural consultant. The pilot project comprises the main procurement, supported by the architectural consultant and the independent evaluation, described in a companion RfP. This document seeks proposals for the main procurement.
2. Partial funding is available to support elements such as defining the architecture, design and project management of this pilot project, but since it is expected to lead to a commercial opportunity the major development costs will have to be borne by the supplier.
3. This procurement is for the development and provision of systems and services that will result in the provision of a pilot functional and adequately documented network service providing access to articles held in electronic format. Tenders should not exceed £69,000 (inclusive of VAT) and will include provision of the requisite software, hardware and support infrastructure to set up and maintain the service for the two-year pilot period. Prior to the end of this period, the JISC Committee for Electronic Information (CEI) and the Publishers Association (PA) expect to have reached a view on the future of the service and the route for its continuation.
4. Tender proposals are invited to run the pilot project, provide the network system and run the service as specified and should be from one or more organisations. Collaborative proposals where for example one organisation provides software and technical expertise and the other provides commercial expertise and domain knowledge are welcomed.
5. Full tender proposals for the systems and services outlined in this document should be submitted to: Mrs Aarti Ubhi, Secretary, eLib Programme Office, University of Warwick Library, Coventry CV4 7AL. Ten copies of the tender proposals should arrive no later than 5 pm on 6 September 1999. A copy should in addition be emailed to: a.ubhi@warwick.ac.uk. Envelopes/ emails should be clearly marked JISC/PA pilot electronic ILL project.
6. Price will be a consideration in selecting consultants but in seeking value for money the lowest priced bid will not necessarily be selected.
7. The selection of the successful tenderer will be the decision of the eLib Programme Director and the joint chairs of the steering group. If presentations are judged necessary, these will take place on 27 September, 1999.
Further information
8. General enquiries about this request for proposals should be addressed to:
Mr Chris Rusbridge, eLib Programme Director or Ms Elizabeth Graham, eLib Development Coordinator,
eLib Programme Office, University of Warwick Library, Coventry CV4 7AL
tel. 01203 528137, fax 01203 524981, email elib@jisc.ac.uk
9. The aims of the pilot project (comprising this main procurement, the work of the architectural consultant and the evaluation together) are to:
10. Representatives of the JISC and the PA have been engaged in consensus discussions on a variety of subjects for some time (see http://www.jisc.ac.uk/curriss/collab/#c6). One significant discussion was on the question of inter-library loan (ILL) in the electronic environment. Under the Copyright Act, interlibrary loans can be made without requiring the permission of the copyright owner, but only under strict conditions. There were different opinions at the start of the discussions about the applicability of ILL if the source document is not a paper version owned by the library, but instead a digital version licensed by the library. ILL is an important facility for libraries, essential in broadening access at reasonable cost beyond the core collection possible within the library’s budget. The potential shrinkage of applicability of ILL has serious implications for the ability of libraries to meet their users’ demands from shrinking budgets and in the face of rising costs. However, ILL has always been seen as a threat to subscription and post-publication, royalty-paid sales by the publishers, contributing to the shrinkage of the subscription base but providing no revenue in return.
11. The breakthrough in the JISC/PA talks was the realisation that greatly reduced marginal costs in the electronic environment might allow some revenue to be returned to publishers where none had been before, at the same time as improving service for users. This idea was attractive to publishers, and the suggestion then arose that it should be tested in a pilot project. While it was recognised that ‘inter-library loan’ is a misnomer for the kind of service proposed, its continuing use symbolised for librarians the resource-sharing to which they are committed for the public good.
12. JISC has agreed to part-fund this pilot which would run for 24 months (the document on the basis of which JISC agreed the funds is attached for information as Appendix A; it should be made clear that the details have changed in some respects since then, and in the event of any conflict the main text of this RfP will apply). It is clear that the funds available are insufficient to fully fund the project, but we hope that the potential for continuing and growing business after the pilot will make this an attractive proposition. Publishers who agree to participate in the pilot may also be making a substantial investment, in both costs and staffing, to ensure an appropriate interface with their own systems.
13. Despite the funding coming entirely from JISC, it must be made clear that this is a joint project with the PA. Publishers will need to make significant investments to participate.
14. The pilot project would provide an alternative to inter-library loan for the supply of electronic copies of journal articles, whether these are retained in electronic or only in print form. The route for supply would be from the server of the publisher of the journal article via a clearing-house service at a standard price similar to what libraries currently pay for an inter-library loan request. In the pilot project a number of publishers and libraries would establish procedures, test systems and evaluate results (see Appendix B for a list of publishers who have expressed an interest in participating, in principle). The selected organisation would create and operate the clearing-house service: receive electronic requests from libraries; establish whether or not electronic delivery is available (and, if not, redirect the request to the normal paper-to-paper system); identify the source of the article; request the article from the publisher or other supplier; transmit the text to the user (via the library if necessary); notify the library of delivery; invoice the library; and distribute an agreed proportion of the income to the publisher.
15. The conventional ILL system for non-returnable items (mostly copies of articles or book chapters) works as follows:
16. There are various additional restrictions:
17. The proposed system would work in a rather similar way, with the following differences:
18. Otherwise, similar conditions apply.
19. There must be a mechanism for the clearinghouse to divert the request into the normal ILL system, if the requested article is not electronically available in the system. There may also be circumstances in which the clearinghouse has to refuse a request.
20. The system is expected to work almost entirely without human intervention. There are several significant challenges in achieving this, including
21. Note that the pilot will focus specifically on journal articles; however, the system will need to be capable of extension to cope with other types of requested items, such as conference papers, book chapters etc.
22. In the time available, and before the concept is proved, it is acceptable for a system to be proposed which would initially be of a smaller scale, but capable development to larger scale operation, although it is important that it operates sufficiently reliably in the pilot period to avoid negative impacts on use and therefore perceived usefulness.
23. The Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER) is the name given to JISC’s aspirations to produce an environment where a wide variety of resources, both digital and print, can be found and accessed in a highly integrated way. In the DNER, for example, a journal article might be discovered through searching a set of abstracting and indexing databases; libraries or publisher databases holding the journal article text would be located; the article would be requested and delivered to the user. This example illustrates four of the key DNER verbs: discover, locate, request and deliver. The aim is to integrate the various phases of this process. The proposed service would provide one implementation of the last three verbs, but must also integrate with the first element.
24. The key issue for the architecture is to ensure interoperability by specifying the various interfaces to other systems. If possible, the pilot should use, or aim for, open standards. Candidates include
25. The Australian LIDDAS project is interested in the second alternative; not yet a standard but a simple and creative way of combining elements of existing standards which could itself be eligible for a standardisation process.
26. It is suggested that articles would be delivered as emails with MIME attachments in the agreed formats. Multi-file documents must be provided for. Some means of attaching copyright management guidance information should be provided.
27. Delivery formats might vary widely, but the following are suggested:
Multimedia articles may not be suitable for this form of delivery, as they rely on software available only at the host system. A means will be required to identify these, and to provide an appropriate response to the requester (such as providing an authorised link to the host server).
28. Some of the architectural requirements are implied in the system requirements specified below.
29. This pilot provides an excellent opportunity for both libraries and publishers to pilot the real-world application of DOIs. Some of the publishers are particularly keen for this to become a revenue-generating DOI-demonstrator project.
30. An independent architectural consultant will be retained to work with the pilot project to define the architecture acceptable for the pilot project and appropriate for a full service. The successful tenderer will be expected to cooperate fully with this architectural consultant, who will report separately to the steering group.
31. The funds available for this pilot are not sufficient in themselves to carry out the project. The funding is not expected to continue beyond the end of the pilot. However, the pilot project is predicated on the belief and expectation that viable business opportunities will accrue as the pilot develops into a service. The table in Appendix A was created by participants in the JISC/PA working group, and is provided for information only. Respondents to this RfP must take full responsibility for performing their own market analysis and business planning.
32. The JISC and the PA have set up a steering group which will be involved in the selection of the final proposal, and in monitoring the pilot project. The Steering Group will require regular reports on a monthly basis, and will require documents to be delivered at key milestones as identified in the proposal or as negotiated with the proposer.
33. As part of this pilot project, a separate contract will be let for the design and execution of an independent evaluation study. The successful tenderer will be expected to cooperate fully with this evaluation study.
In this section. the term clearinghouse is used to mean the successful tenderer.
The clearinghouse will
34. address in the proposal each of these requirements explicitly
35. provide with the proposal an outline of how the proposed service will be implemented
36. provide a project manager to oversee the pilot project and act as a single point of contact (note the project manager is expected to coordinate all aspects of the project and not just the work within the clearinghouse; specifically, the project manager is expected to work to recruit participant publishers and libraries)
37. provide reports to the Steering Group every month and attend Steering Group meetings approximately 3 times per year
38. work with the Steering Group to ensure the success of the project
39. be able to demonstrate a general understanding of the DNER and the MODELS Information Architecture (for a Powerpoint presentation describing this, see URL http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/dlis/models/models6/iap/)
40. be able to demonstrate a good understanding of publisher systems and the DOI and other relevant standards
41. have a proven track record in developing and running systems for the library and/or publisher markets.
The clearinghouse will
42. enlist the participation of publishers and librarians to ensure a meaningful scale of operation for the pilot project
43. provide appropriate hardware, software and staff to run the service (see below for further requirements)
44. start the pilot service within 6 months of commencement, and run the pilot service for at least 18 months
45. be able to demonstrate adequate Internet connectivity to both the SuperJANET (customer side) and commercial Internet (publisher-side) sectors (specifically, name the Internet Service Provider to be used in the proposal)
46. provide support for pilot users including documentation, publicity and awareness raising material and activities, and if possible a help desk and training
47. cooperate with an independent evaluation which will take into account the views of users, librarians, publishers and the clearinghouse itself
48. determine and report to the Steering Group an exit strategy indicating options for developing the pilot to a full service, and how this could be funded.
The clearinghouse must
49. work with the architectural consultant to define the way the pilot service will operate initially and the way it should operate as it moves towards a full service.
The proposed system will
50. be able to receive requests from users, probably authorised by the ILL librarian. This should be a machine-processable request which could originate from a broker, eg ISO ILL or Z39.50 item order, but might in the first instance be a web front end for access by authorised users (probably ILL librarians in such a case)
51. have a suitable authentication system for authorised users (taking ATHENS into consideration, see URL http://www.athens.ac.uk)
52. be able to determine whether an electronic version of a requested document can be supplied from the set of participating publisher systems (some of which may be operated on their behalf by others)
53. be able to pass requests into the paper-based ILL system should useful electronic versions not be accessible, with notification to the requester, the responsibility being upon the library originating the request to ensure that the normal inter-library loan copyright declaration is signed by the end-user
54. have a means to determine the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) or other identifier as appropriate for the requested article from the citation details, handling abbreviated or inaccurate citations, and dealing appropriately with ambiguous results
55. be able to resolve the DOI or identifier to locate the applicable publisher system for a particular article,
56. have a standards-based way to request the identified article from the publisher system
57. have an assured system (verifiable) to transfer the requested article to the end user (or failing that, the ILL librarian authorising the transaction, to be passed on to the end user and not retained), via email or other suitable means, embedded in appropriate information indicating the restrictions on re-use
58. have a system to invoice libraries for successful transactions, supported by appropriate information, to receive and account for payments, and to pay publishers their proportion of the received income. The bidder is to specify how this is to be achieved and what experience this is based on.
Chris Rusbridge, eLib Programme Office, 5 July, 1999
This is available as a separate document.
Approaches were made to large publishers who were known to be actual or potential users of the DOI (note that the project's relevance as a practical – and (modest) revenue-generating – application of the DOI will be one of its attractions to publishers).