Thorny issues in licensing: an institution’s view

Thorny issues in licensing: an institution’s view Louise Cole Senior Information Advisor (Collections) Kingston University JIBS-Eduserv Seminar, Wednesday 16 June 2010

Summary • What do licenses do? • Partnerships: franchised and validated • Joint courses • Commercial partnerships • Alumni • Walk-in users • Distance learners • Site definitions • Collaboration between non-commercial partners • Interaction with ERM • Storing licenses • Historical information • Issues of interpretation • Some trends in how universities operate • In the future …

What do licenses do? • Set rules for who can use • … what they can do and how they can do it • … what they can’t do • Provide an agreed contract for use between both parties • Model licenses generally have the same basic list of clauses: • Licensor responsibilities • Licensee responsibilities • Security (who can use and how) • Payment • Terms and termination

Who … • Current teaching, research and support staff on the University payroll or on honorary contracts • Teaching staff teaching franchised or validated courses at other institutions • Support staff (e.g. librarians) supporting students on franchised or validated programmes of study • Students who are based at other institutions and following franchised or validated programmes • UK or non-UK • Alumni, start-up companies, commercial partnerships, academic partnerships, NHS …

Partnerships Franchised • Where the University has designed a course and agrees that a partner college or other organisation can deliver it on their behalf • Students are registered at the awarding institution but wholly or partly taught elsewhere • Have access to all the resources of the institution to which they are registered Validated • Where the University agrees that a course designed and delivered by a partner college or other organisation meets the standards required for the award of a University qualification • Students are registered at the partner college or organisation • No access to awarding institution resources (except as walk-in users)

Joint courses • University may co-run a course with one or more institutions (sometimes another HE institution, or one in FE, or some other scheme) • Some examples exist where courses are shared between more than one institution (and students are ‘home’ at one and have rights as student at the others); or even where a faculty is jointly operated between two institutions • Where are students registered for licence purposes and what is their status?

Commercial partnerships • Delivery of a course to a particular group of people in some form of industry or service outside of an educational establishment • Courses or collaborations which are sponsored by money from commercial companies • Students on placement in industry • Define commercial – many academics have both educational and commercial interests

Alumni • Students who have graduated but who are still affiliated to the university as external paid members • No longer ‘our students’ • Opportunities to offer them resource access as part of their membership and raise money … • … have licenses evolved to take account of this?

Walk-in users • By far the largest group – and one covered by most licences as long as the user is within University or library property • Can be anyone from a member of the NHS or a local college to a visiting member of the public • Universities need to ensure authentication controls have been implemented to prevent access to material not licenced for walk-in users

Distance learners • Students who are based wholly or partly away from the home institution • May be based within the UK or abroad • Usually taught within the home institution for a short period of time; otherwise taught by staff local to the institution in which they are based • Students who are part-time and otherwise working within a variety of sectors including hospitals, schools and commercial companies

Site definitions … UK: Oxford University Press: “In most cases, Oxford Journals define a site as being within one metropolitan boundary i.e. within a city. So if all of your institution's buildings are within one city, you can apply for our institutional site license”. UK: BMJ Journals: “We define a single site as one geographic location (academic or non-academic) that is under a single administration”. US: American Academy of Pediatrics: “An “Institution” includes all parts of a single organization that are located within the same city and administered centrally”. US: IEEE: “Institutions that have more than one physical location located more than five (5) miles from another location, may incur additional charged to access the licensed products. Groups of buildings that share the same campus or are located within five (5) miles of each other will be counted as a single site”.

… and authorised users OUP: “All members (employees, faculty, staff and students) of the subscribing institution site are entitled to online access … includes visitors …accessing via terminals located on the site and under the control of the subscribing institution … includes members using their home computers … authenticated by the institution via password controlled access to an institutional proxy server, or via Athens”. AAP: “persons with a current, authenticated affiliation to the subscribing Institution …includes full- and part-time students and employees …plus other individuals who have permission to use the public computers …” IEEE: “Authorized Users” are (a) persons affiliated with Licensee as students, faculty or employees of Licensee; (b) persons physically present in Licensee's facilities; or (c) such other persons as IEEE may, at the request of Licensee and in IEEE’s sole discretion, authorize in writing to access the Licensed Products”. BMJ: means full and part-time employees, staff, independent contractors and students who are officially affiliated with the Licensee at the Location valid Internet Protocol (“IP”) address(es) provided by the Licensee to Licensor or via remote access …

Interaction with ERMs • Most electronic resource management systems (ERMs) allow license information to be input and shared with users through a public interface • Licenses should be made available in a more machine-readable format • Licenses should be less legalese and more user-friendly: after all, many institutions do not have legal specialists dealing day-to-day with e-resource terms and conditions • Reference to license terms should be quick, easy, and searchable • Model licensing – is this still the way to go? • Inconsistency …

Keeping the historical record … • What we had access to in a previous licence (content, perpetual access, holdings) • Issues around perpetual and/or post-cancellation access • Who had access then (defined authorised user and what happens if this definition changes now) • From where (on- and off-campus, UK and non-UK) • From when (backfile) • How could they access (IP, password, Athens, Shibboleth, proxy) • If licences are renegotiated which takes precedence? • Why …

Issues of interpretation • University says ‘these are our students as they are registered with us’; provider says ‘they are not’ • University says ‘we are single site even though we maintain two campuses in different cities as they have one administration and one IP range’; provider says ‘no you are not’ • University says ‘access is available to staff teaching on our course at another university’; provider says ‘it isn’t’ • University says that joint courses should mean joint provision of resources; provider says ‘it should not’ • Licenses are grey areas – should there be more clarity? • Should licenses’ main focus be to prevent, not allow?

Trends in how universities operate • Overseas campuses • Overseas partnerships • Partnerships with industry • Partnerships across sectors (HE/FE) • Joint initiatives linking universities together • Courses validated in the armed forces • CPD and lifelong learning • Partnerships with local businesses • Partnerships with public libraries and museums

In the future … • As universities compete for students partnership arrangements will be the way forward • Alumni and other external members will require enhanced access to resources (especially in a print to e shift) • Every university will explore further innovation in its strategic development: will licenses be able to support this in terms of resource provision? • Will the ‘virtual campus’ become a reality?

Thorny issues in licensing: an institution’s view