Kortext addresses ProQuest news and reaffirms commitment to the library market
Yesterday, Clarivate announced that ProQuest will be phasing out one-time perpetual purchases of print and digital books for libraries and will be shutting down OASIS. For full details, view Clarivate’s press release.
As digital content suppliers to the academic market for over a decade, Kortext wants to reassure our customers – we confirm our commitment to library supply and to perpetual access eBook sales in particular.
James Gray, Kortext CEO and founder, commented:
“This news has come as a surprise, sparking widespread concern about the appropriateness of a one-size-fits-all solution and continuation of supply. Based on my 30+ years’ experience in content provision, I know that higher education is a complex market.
Each institution is different, with particular needs determined by their student body, library budgets and aspirations. From our customer conversations, we believe the market needs healthy competition and a mixed-model approach. We confirm our commitment to this.
We are confident that other suppliers will have effective print book supply arrangements they can offer to libraries, while our approach has very much focused on digital content provision.”
Digital content
Kortext continues to offer an inventory of 3.2 million eBooks (both textbooks and monographs) to libraries through a wide range of models:
- Perpetual access licences
- Rental/subscription options covering:
- Unlimited or limited concurrency eBook licences
- 1:1 eTextbooks
- Demand-driven acquisition (DDA) and patron-driven acquisition (PDA) for both perpetual access content and rental/subscription content
- An ever-growing library of OER/OA content available as free-to-access eBooks.
Library workflows
This development validates the heavy investment we’ve been making in our own acquisitions platform, Kortext acquire, based on our customer feedback.
We will be accelerating the pace of development so Kortext acquire can serve as a free-to-use acquisition tool for any library, integrated with all key library systems to deliver seamless workflow for content discovery, selection and acquisition.
Recent enhancements to Kortext acquire have included EDI and API integration, institution-specific upfront pricing and discounts, increased automation, direct reading list integration, and faster content provision.
Additionally, it provides crucial usage data, so librarians can make data-driven decisions to maximise budgets and optimise resource allocation.
Publishers
This news will have an impact on publishers and we encourage our publishing partners to reach out to us so we can ensure your content is available for libraries to acquire under the licence models they are used to.
Kortext has long-standing relationships with leading academic publishers. The current roster includes 8,000+ publishing companies worldwide, both large and small. We offer tailored solutions to make content more discoverable, with seamless workflow to enable easy acquisition, while delivering insights on usage.
In summary
Our final message is one emphasising partnership and choice: Kortext is here and is not going anywhere – quite the opposite.
We continue to invest in solutions to meet the needs of libraries while ensuring we also deliver the best, connected digital content reading and usage platform available. This ultimately supports students in their studies and helps improve the overall student experience and outcomes.
We are committed to working collaboratively with our university library partners, current and new, to deliver what they need to support their institutions. We invite librarians and publishers to talk to us so we can work together to ensure smooth continuation of supply.
To find out more about Kortext’s tailored content solutions, please reach out to your Partnership Manager or contact us at marketing@kortext.com
