MCB University Press is an independent
academic publisher established more than 30 years ago
by a group of academics from the Bradford Management Centre, UK. It has grown
rapidly and now has a representative office in Malaysia, and associates
in Australia, Japan and the United States.
"Emerald Fulltext was
originally developed for electronic delivery of all MCB titles,"
said Andrea Key, MCB Consortium Manager
in an exclusive interview with ACCESS. "It's completely separate
from Anbar. The reason we changed the name of Anbar was
to bring it within the Emerald family."
Emerald Fulltext comprises over 130 MCB journals with full text back to 1994 and abstracts
back to 1989. Updated weekly and with over 3,500
abstracts and full text articles added each year, the database currently
offers 35,000 articles. It's a best seller.
 400 management
titles world wide
But that's not all. "We also offer
Emerald Reviews (formerly known as Anbar) which is the top 400
management titles world wide" says Key. "It has a very
international focus with contributions from all over the world
and it's also 90 percent peer reviewed so it's
quite an academic based management database. In addition,
Computer Abstracts International, Computer & Communications Security Abstracts and
International Civil Engineering Abstracts are three other abstracting databases marketed by
us which contain non-MCB
titles."
So MCB is not simply
a publisher, but a distributor of data too. Says Key, "It's us
acting as an information provider. We want to give customers a broader
management base to work from."
Access to the
Emerald databases is fast and reliable.
MCB uses 32 servers around the world to host
its electronic material. The servers belong to Catchword which has
recently been purchased by ingenta. So it would
seem that
local hosting is not an option. But according to Key,
"We're working with the iGroup to locally host our
databases in countries where there is a demand but
where internet access to the outside world is slow. We're working on
this for Thailand because we can see that it's the best solution
for people using our data."
Consortium deals very
popular in Asia
It's on the
consortium front though, that rapid advances are being made. A
consortium in Thailand has just got off the ground with five
member institutions and more to follow. "Normally we only
start a group if they spend more than a specified minimum
amount of money" says Key, "but we recognize that this cannot
always be the case. We can offer several models to suit
different local conditions including purely electronic.
Interestingly though, only one consortium has chosen this
model and then a while later they started to order lots of
paper copies."
The most popular
model in Asia is Paper Plus whereby subscribers continue to
get paper copies of the journals the currently subscribe to
but when they join the consortium they get access to the full
130 titles on Emerald Fulltext for just a small extra charge.
Further, any additional paper subscriptions are supplied at
discounted prices.
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This has proved a
very attractive way of doing business for Asian libraries. The
MCB Korean consortium is huge: 72 members and growing rapidly.
Says Key, "It's a good example of an open consortium where we
deal with established consortium groups, groups put together
by agents, and customers which MCB brings to the table. Where
Thailand differs is that we're starting with a small number
and building it up. Usually we start with a bigger group and
then add members year on year but in Thailand we're adding
them as and when." Consortia in Taiwan, Hong Kong and
Singapore are in various stages of development. In Taiwan 14
members have been secured and in Hong Kong five.
Buy a few, get access to
all
Is all this too good
to be true? Key explained to ACCESS the principles of Paper
Plus. "What we do is look at the total holdings of the
customer grouping that wants to join the consortium. For
example, 14 institutions collectively subscribe to 50 hard
copy titles. If they want to subscribe to the full database of
130 titles we charge them an access fee and then open up the
database to every institution in the group. So if University A
takes 12 titles and University B takes 10 titles, A will keep
their 12 paper subscriptions and B will keep their 10 but they
get access to all 130 titles like everybody else in the group.
Some will have more paper titles than others but the people
who have more paper titles are generally spending more money
anyway.
"The guiding
philosophy behind our willingness to work with consortia is to
get our information to as many people as possible. We've
realised that because of MCB's journal pricing, some of the
smaller institutions can't afford to subscribe to many,
whereas being in a consortium benefits the smaller
institutions as well as the bigger ones. Everybody gains
something. It's all about community as well: the library
community joining together so that everybody benefits from
wider access and increased usage."
MCB understands too
that a fair archiving policy is of concern to its customers.
So it provides an archiving service to the years which the
library subscribed should they cancel their subscription. Data
can continue to be provided through the internet or on an
archival CD-ROM. Currently, the archive is provided to
consortium members only as a benefit of membership.
Open to negotiation and
new models
With such generous
and flexible terms and conditions, it's no surprise that MCB
is doing well. "The reason for our success in Asia" says Key,
"is that we're open to negotiation and new models, we're very
flexible and it's the open consortium which fits in with Asian
conditions. It's working well because we're partnering with
companies such as the iGroup who can do things on our behalf.
And generally speaking, consortium agreements work much faster
when we partner with representatives in that particular
country. They have the contacts, they can make visits and they
speak the language which is a big stumbling block for us when
we try to explain the options and models. Many librarians
think our models are too good to be true and that they have
missed something. Libraries all over the world are universal
in that their budgets are reducing so if they can get a good
deal - more for less, or more value for money products -
they'll go for it. We've established ourselves as a publisher
who listens, who never turns anyone away and who tries to work
with everybody who approaches us because we can be flexible."
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