Multinational Licensing Tender
Background
The Knowledge Exchange multinational Licensing Tender proposal has been published using the European Union's "competitive dialogue" tender process. The tender led to national and opt-in subscription offers (licenses) for online research journals and e-books to the four Knowledge Exchange partner countries by five publishers. These licenses, based on innovative business models, are now being promoted by Knowledge Exchange and the publishers – the so called Route to Market.
This page provides an insight in the purpose of the tender and the process towards the current.
Purpose
The purpose of the Licensing Tender is to determine whether, by working together as national organisations, the Knowledge Exchange partners can leverage greater economies of scale and promote greater transparency in licence agreements that publishers offer.
The Knowledge Exchange partners hope to stimulate the market to offer new content packages to support education and research and to promote innovative business models. The tender focuses specifically on bids in the areas of journals, databases, and multimedia content. If a success, the result will be a first step towards a richer, more affordable and wider availability of content should be achieved.
Strategic goals: the future of publishing
These specific goals of the Licensing Tender form an integral part of the Knowledge Exchange vision to explore new developments in the future of publishing. This includes working together with publishers to discover new licensing models and establish platforms for the output of research that can satisfy modern needs.
In this context, the four partner organisations are exploring the possibilities and opportunities that might be gained through collaborative licensing arrangements. Main goals were economies of scale and more transparency as well as better alignment with the rapidly changing scholarly and publication processes.
Why the focus on licenses?
In March 2006, during a meeting at the JISC annual conference, Malcolm Read (Executive Secretary, JISC), Wim Liebrand (Director, SURFfoundation) and Jürgen Bunzel (Head of LIS Division, DFG) discussed national licensing issues and common ways forward.
It was felt that without a significant impulse the not very satisfactory license situation would not change, and this might well be an issue where the newly established Knowledge Exchange partnership might make a difference. A subsequent meeting of senior management from the four Knowledge Exchange organisations in Bonn, July 2006, led to the ‘Bonn Accord’, an agreement to establish a framework for testing multi-national licensing.
Big challenges
While working out the possible ways to achieve a multi-national licensing framework, the idea emerged that the best way to achieve tangible results would be to invite publishers to think along. The first challenge would be how to get the four very different national procurement systems of the Knowledge Exchange partners working together; an even bigger challenge would be how to handle the many specific publishers and their objects, that so far were contracted in individual ‘Big Deals’ in a single agreement.
A tender to invite new ideas
In September 2006 national licensing experts from the four Knowledge Exchange countries met in Berlin and decided that a joint international tender, challenging publishers to venture their ideas, would move the ‘Bonn Accord’ agenda forward. In return for their efforts to invest in exploring new business models Knowledge Exchange would commit itself to support and promote the best license offers that publishers would come up with to the market of higher education and research institutions and libraries.
In this way any yet undisclosed original concept that might show up could be taken into account for further exploration. At the same time this method reduced the risk of being prescribing a way forward too strongly.
At the same time an invitation to the publishers would be a break with the past. Positions would be reversed: the publishers would be asked to come to us to work on new business models, as opposed to us being requested to accept an offer made.
For reasons of transparency and legal responsibilities involved and not wanting to waste time constructing a whole new tender procedure, the existing EU competitive dialogue procedure was chosen as the vehicle for the KE Licensing Tender.
How did the Competitive Dialogue Process Work?
The Knowledge Exchange Licensing Tender, following the EU competitive dialogue procedure, consisted of several stages: an information phase, a dialogue phase and a proposal phase, each described in more detail below:
Initially a request for information was issued. Here the tendering agency, Knowledge Exchange informs the market (the publishers) of its general need. This is a rather abstract request with the aim of “creating” a market around this, now articulated, need.
Then followed the dialogue phase in which the Knowledge Exchange engaged in a dialogue with selected bidders, publishers responding positively to the request for information, to make their proposals more concrete.
Finally, a request for proposals was issued in which the previously selected publishers were asked to each submit much more detailed proposals on the basis of a now refined document stating the exact aims and conditions. If in this stage Knowledge Exchange accepted a proposal and acknowledged that it met the criteria, then according to the rules of the Competitive Dialogue approach, an agreement was concluded between the publisher and Knowledge Exchange with regard to the promotion and marketing of the license offer.
The tender process was launched in February 2007 with the 'Request for information'. Bids were received from 22 publishers – on the whole a very encouraging result. Of these bids, 10 publishers were selected to enter into the “dialogue” phase. Interviews with each of the ten were held in Warwick within the UKSG conference in April 2007.
Equal treatment, a new perspective
In all of the above stages, the principle of equal treatment had to be applied – additional information given to one bidder had to be given to all. For the publishers this was an experience they were unfamiliar with - they were informed about the type of clarification their colleagues asked for and they all had to act on the same information.
After the interviews in the dialogue phase, the Knowledge Exchange partners evaluated the results. Elements of the various proposed business models were incorporated into a business framework, marked optional or mandatory. Bidding publishers could then use these elements as building blocks to create an innovative business model that would span the four Knowledge Exchange partner countries. On 18 July, the same 10 invited publishers were then asked to submit a definite proposal for the licensing of electronic resources.
By the deadline on 27 August, 9 of the 10 invited publishers had submitted bids in response to the Request for Proposals on Multinational Licensing. This number was much higher than expected and the Knowledge Exchange working group was very pleased by this result.
How were the bids evaluated?
Each country invited experts from their home community to mark the 9 proposals. Markers were partner and community / library experts in licensing matters.
The proposals were evaluated on the basis of the following three (weighed) criteria: Innovation and value for money offered by proposed business model (40%); level of compliance with access strategy (10%); and fit of content to the academic strategy of the country (50%). Furthermore, markers were asked to provide an overall value impression of individual bids. The Knowledge Exchange partners factored in these impressions as they made their final decision on the bids.
In the decision making process, each country had one vote, but consensus amongst all four partners had to be reached for a decision.
Five publishers for Route to Market
On 24 September 2007, representatives from the four Knowledge Exchange Partners came together to evaluate the marks and select the bids that were fully acceptable.
The partners jointly selected 5 of the 9 proposals to be taken further on the Route to Market.
These are:
• The Scientific World: a hybrid open-access / fee-based online journal in the life sciences
• MultiScience Direct: an aggregator of 14 engineering journals
• BioOne: a aggregation of bioscience research journals run by a non-profit consortia
• SWETS / ALPSP: a collection of 433 journals from 44 diverse publishers, enabling small and medium-sized publishers to sell effectively to consortia and other library customers by packaging their journals in a single collection with a single umbrella license, pricing model and delivery platform
• Wiley InterScience OnlineBooks: a package of e-book offers from these two recently merged publishers
Route to Market
In the tender process, the Knowledge Exchange and its partner organisations offer the selected publishers a Route to Market: Knowledge Exchange can provide publishers with facilitated access to 190 research universities and large teaching universities, and a further 1500 other affiliated higher education and publicly funded research institutions. This more or less covers the full breadth of the academic community in the four partner countries.
The Knowledge Exchange partners would thus work with successful bidders in the following ways:
• Offer the bids to the respective institutions across the four Knowledge Exchange partner counties;
• Endorse and promote the bids to the libraries;
• Provide a single point for contact for publishers resulting in better efficiency and reduced administrative costs for bidders;
• Provide central evaluation of contracts by legal experts, which will give libraries the assurance of a sound contract and encourage take-up of the offers;
• Provide further efficiencies in administration costs, for example by the management of a single payment by Knowledge Exchange partners, if applicable.
The individual details in the final bids from the 5 publishers have been clarified by the working group and negotiations are under way at the national level to see which bids will be taken forward as “national licenses” and which will be passed on to the library community as “opt-in” frameworks. The four partner organizations will sign so-called “Framework Agreements” with each of the 5 publishers to regulate the deals.
In March 2008, the individual partners will begin communicating the deals to their consortia and the individual institutions. Start of April all information will be available online.
The Opt-in phase will begin in April and end in November.
Timetable
- 14 February 2007 Publish the Request for Information
- 23 March Deadline for Request of Information
- 30 March Evaluation of results; invite successful bidders to an interview
- 16 April, 3pm at UKSG Conference One-by-one interviews with selected bidders
- 18 July Issue Request for Proposal
- 27 August (40 days later) Deadline for Request of Proposal
- 24 September Evaluation of proposals, final decisions
- 19 November Town-Hall style and individual Meetings with Publishers to explain the next steps in the road to market and clarify aspects of the individual bids.
- March 2008 Sign Framework Agreement with publishers
- April Begin Opt-In Phase for the Bids / Communicate with communities
- November End of Opt-in Phase for the Bids
The Licensing Tender Working Group
- Wilma Mossink (SURFfoundation and SURFdiensten) (lead)
- Markus Brammer (TIB Hannover, for DFG)
- Bas Cordewener (SURFfoundation)
- Lorraine Estelle (JISC Collections)
- Bo Öhrström (DEFF)
- Anette Schneider (Technical Information Center of Denmark)
- Lone Madsen (University Library of Southern Denmark)
- Hildegard Schäffler (BSB Munich, for DFG)
- Nol Verhagen (U. Amsterdam, for SURFdiensten)
|
