Contemporary Trends and Debates in E-Journal Licensing

Licensing has been a predominate means of governing the transfer of electronic journal content between publishers and libraries since the early 1990s. This presentation provides an overview of what has and has not changed in the last 20 years of e-journal licensing practices. Eschenfelder describes what model license recommended terms have been widely adopted and which have not since the early 2000s with specific reference to scholarly sharing, interlibrary loan, electronic reserves, and perpetual access. The presentation offers a look at the results from two studies that examined these elements of licensing and explains why many libraries have not adopted alternative means for governing licensing between libraries and publishers, despite their potential to reduce transaction costs