Serials Acquisitions Section

Publisher Verification Project

Goals of the Project

1. Present an accurate picture in the Package Level Record in Vera, including
   • the general pricing model for the publisher / package
   • how MIT purchases their content (i.e., how their general pricing model applies to MIT)
   • licensing details
   • activation details
   • maintenance details
2. Accurately list in Commitments the titles published by a given publisher, including
   • standardizing the publisher's name in the Publisher field
   • updating the PubCheck date
   • verifying the Alternate Format (AltFMT) field
3. Accurately list in Vera the titles published by a given publisher, including
   • standardizing the publisher's name in the Publisher field
   • ensuring the Coverage field is filled in for existing titles
   • ensuring access works at the URL provided in URLNative
   • ensuring each title has a Vera subject
4. Reporting pertinent changes and additions to SerCat for work in Barton and SFX, including
   • URL changes
   • title changes and title additions
   • coverage changes

Familiarizing Yourself with the Publisher

1. Read the publisher's catalog
   Prior to getting down to the nitty gritty of the pub check, you'll want to read the publisher's current catalog, specifically for pricing model changes and licensing changes that may impact how we acquire/access their electronic journals. Compare the current with the previous catalog: if everything is much the same, proceed to doing the title by title check in Commitments. If there is some grave discrepancy or change for the upcoming year (e.g. free with print access has been superceded by a print + electronic pricing model; or the publisher has gone to a tiered pricing model), bring to Kim's attention.
2. Package Level Record in Vera
   If no Package Level Record exists for your publisher or package, create one. If the record does exist, modify it to fit current reality. Definitions of kinds of packages and what fields to fill in for Package Level Records is available.

Commitments: Verifying Who Publishes What

Work through publisher by publisher, comparing what they say they publish with what we think they publish. Once you have decided on a publisher to work on, or it has been decided for you, you should...

1. Obtain a catalog of the publisher's journals. You may work from
   1. a regular printed catalog (if available), or
   2. a list on the publisher's web site (more common option). This handy list of publisher URLs should help you out. But, shouldn't I mention here the Master Check List on the R drive?
2. Find all the journals Commitments thinks are published by that publisher.
   1. Go into Find mode (Ctrl-F, or choose Find from the Mode menu).
   2. Put an A in the Status field, J in the Type field, and words from the publisher's name in the Publisher field.
   3. Duplicate the above request, remove the J from the Type column, and put the words "cat as" (without the quotes) in the Title field. (See Notes about "cat as" below).
   4. Create a third request and put JSTOR-S in the Vendor field and click the Omit box in the left hand pane (you do not need to update the publisher field or the PubCheck field in JSTOR records, and adding this request line will omit JSTOR records from your results).
   5. Hit Return.
   6. Sort your results by title by clicking on the TITLE column heading.
   7. Notice that when we have both formats (print and electronic), two Commitments records exist. Records for electronic access will say [WEB ACCESS] at the end of the title field in addition to the FMT field saying E.
3. First Pass: Work from your results in Commitments to the publisher's printed list, comparing title by title.
   1. Make a black check mark on the publisher's printed list for each title in your results set in Commitments.
   2. In Commitments, put the date of the publisher's catalog in the PubCheck field to note that the publisher was last verified on this date. For example, if you are working from the publisher's 2007 subscription list, your PubCheck date should be 1/1/2007. If it isn't clear what the catalog year is, use the date of your printout instead. The date should be the same date for all titles by that publisher.
   3. Also, make sure that the "authorized" version of the publisher's name is in the Publisher field.
4. Second Pass: Next you'll need to check all the titles on the publisher's printed list that didn't show up in your results list.
   1. Do a Find in the Title field for words in the title as listed on the printed list; you'll need to do this for each title in the list.
   2. If the title appears with the correct publisher (which may happen), just change the PubCheck date. It may be that you missed it in your initial pass, or that the version of the publisher name is slightly different. Make sure the publisher name matches the other versions of the name exactly. Make a black check mark on your printed list next to this title.
   3. If the title appears with a different publisher in the publisher field, consider the pricing / purchasing model of the old publisher before changing the publisher field.
   4. If the title does not appear in Commitments at all, make a black circle with a line through it mark on your printed list next to the title.
5. Third Pass: What is still listed in Commitments as being from your publisher, but not on your printout/catalog?
   1. You can find these by doing a two-request Find as follows:
   2. A in the Status field, J in the Type field, words from the publishers's name in the Publisher column, and <[verification date] in the PubCheck field
   3. Duplicate the above request, remove the J from the Type field, and put "cat as" (without the quotes) in the Title field.
      
6. List discrepancies:What Commitments lists and what the publisher lists are never going to correlate 100%; there will always be discrepancies. There seem to be four categories of such discrepancies. You should compose an email message containing these four categories for each publisher you verify, and send the email message to Kim.
   1. The following titles were listed in Commitments as being published by PUBLISHER X, but they do not appear in the list of titles provided by the publisher:
      • Food Science and Technology [WEB ACCESS] {example only!}
      • Journal of Marine Science [WEB ACCESS]{example only!}
   2. The following titles were listed in Commitments as being published by someone other than PUBLISHER X. I changed them in Commitments to PUBLISHER X, but their old publishers are listed below.
      • Annals of botany WAS Oxford University Press {example only!}
      • Toxicological sciences WAS Oxford University Press {example only!}
   3. The following titles were listed in Commitments as Type=S, but are on the list provided by PUBLISHER X. I didn't change the type in Commitments, but here are the titles.
      • Encyclopedia of separation science {example only!}
      • Environmental forensics {example only!}
      • Epilepsy & behavior {example only!}
      • Molecular therapy {example only!}
      • Solid state nuclear magnetic resonance {example only!}
   4. For the following titles, I was unsure if the title listed in Commitments was an exact match for the one on the listing provided by the publisher (though it was really close). I've indicated below whether I thought the match was good enough to change the PubCheck date, or not. The first title is from Commitments, the second from the publisher's list.
      • CVGIP: Graphical Models and Image Processing [WEB ACCESS] = Graphical Models and Image Processing: PUBCHECK DATE CHANGED
      • Journal of Marine Science [WEB ACCESS] = ICES Journal of Marine Science PUBCHECK DATE NOT CHANGED
      With the information in the above four categories, it'll be easier to parcel it out the titles to the correct staff to follow up. For example, I'll take the things in #4 and make sure the titles really do match (I can look them up in Barton and match on their ISSN, which is the International Standard Serial Number and is a unique number to identify a title). For the first two, I'll ask Sally to follow up, particularly since ejournal access is likely affected.

Vera: Verifying Titles Against Commitments

Now that Commitments has an accurate list of all the titles by a given publisher to which MIT has a subscription, you are ready to update and add Vera records.

1. Find the records included in your check.
   1. Go into Find mode (Ctrl-F, or choose Find from the Mode menu).
   2. Put words from the publisher's name in the Publisher field.
   3. Create a second request and put JSTOR-S in the Interface field and click the Omit box in the left hand pane (you do not need to verify titles in the JSTOR packages; these will be done separately as JSTOR package check; adding this request line will omit JSTOR records from your results). (Note that depending on your publisher, you may find it useful to omit other kinds of titles, e.g. Project MUSE or possible records coming from Serials Solutions loads.)
   4. Hit Return.
   5. Switch to the Licensed List tab where you can sort your results by title, then switch back to the Licensed Detail tab to continue your work.
2. For each title, check the following things:
   1. Add the ORDER number from Commitments to the PO Number field in Vera, as appropriate.
   2. Confirm contact information listed in the Tech Phone and Contact Details fields and update as necessary. You want to be able to answer the following questions when looking at these fields:
      1. who do I contact to report a problem accessing this/these resources (e.g., tech support? a specific person?), and how do I make contact (having a phone number and email is best, if possible)?
      2. is the person listed as our Sales Rep still our Sales Rep, and is his/her title and contact information still correct?
   3. Confirm URL: check that the URL in the URLNative field is really still leading us to the title. Is it resolving or redirecting to another URL? Should it be updated? Click on URLResult for each title, open in your browser, and compare what's in your browser's address bar to what's in the URLNative field.
   4. Confirm Coverage: Check that we can still access the years listed in the Coverage field. Have there been changes to the coverage allowed (i.e., is the publisher offering more or less access than in previous subscription years?) Is access to the current year working, or not?

Barton and SFX: Reporting to SerCat

And here is how/what you report to SerCat and why

1. Report out any
   1. URL changes
   2. Coverage changes (either we have access to more issues, or a title has ceased publication and holdings should be closed)
   3. new titles added to package
   4. titles removed from a package, and the bib record and all related records should be removed from Barton
2. Include Vera ID, Title, URL (old and new), Coverage (old and new).

"Cat As"
We use the phrase "cat as" (meaning "cataloged as") to identify titles that the publisher considers to be a journal but that we consider to be some other type (either a serial or a monographic series). For example, the Annal of the ICRP published by Elsevier is cataloged as a serial (Type=S) by MIT, but Elsevier considers it a journal and includes it in their journals list and as part of their ScienceDirect package. In the record for the print version of this title, we include [online cat as j] in the title field, and in the record for the electronic version we include [print cat as S]. When searching for the "journals" by a given publisher, including a find request with "cat as" in the title field allows you to find all the things the publisher considers as a journal without having to look up each title individually.