FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | September 29, 2008

American Chemical Society, JISC Collections open ACS Legacy Archives to educators in UK

The Publications Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) and JISC Collections have agreed to make the ACS Legacy Archives, a digital collection of 22 peer-reviewed journal titles, widely available to universities, colleges and research councils in the UK.

Researchers, teaching staff and students will now have sponsored access to 117 years of chemistry content contained within nearly 1,000 published ACS journal archive volumes, encompassing approximately one half million articles published by that society during the period 1879 to 1995.

The very best minds from more than a century of chemistry are represented in the ACS Legacy Archives, which includes more than 180 published Nobel Laureates in chemistry, physics, physiology and medicine. This distinguished group includes renowned scientists such as Linus Pauling, Irving Langmuir, Carl and Gerty Cori, Elias J. (EJ) Corey, Ahmed Zewail, Rudolph Marcus, Percy Julian, Donald J. Cram, Stanley Prusiner and Selman Waksman.

This license agreement will provide widespread and permanent access to an important scholarly resource that otherwise would only have been available to researchers located at a small number of academic institutions. Under this new arrangement, researchers throughout the UK will benefit from ease of online access to the ACS Legacy Archive, and busy scholars will save both the time and expense of travelling to review this literature at other institutions. Titles contained within the archive include some of the most highly-cited journals in the field, including Chemical Reviews, the Society’s flagship Journal of the American Chemical Society and the Journal of Organic Chemistry, among many other core chemistry publications.

Susan King, Ph.D., Senior Vice President responsible for the peer-reviewed journals publishing at ACS Publications, said that “The publication of the ACS Legacy Archives is central to the ACS mission as a provider of indispensable information for chemists and allied research professionals. The comprehensive content documents a rich history of scientific advances, enabling researchers to reach through time to understand the chain of discoveries that led to modern chemical innovations and that influenced other subject areas such as biology, physics, medicine, agriculture and engineering. We are delighted to bring our Web publishing strengths to bear in providing access to the prestigious publications that constitute the ACS Legacy Archives to the UK academic and research communities.”

Access to this significant archive has been secured for the UK education and research community at a national level by JISC Collections, following an open procurement process, with criteria set by the academic community. All of the bids received from publishers were marked and ranked by the community according to their academic quality, value for money and the willingness of the participants to meet the user needs of the JISC community. The central licensing arrangement achieved via this procurement process provides individual institutions with the freedom to choose how best to provide access based on the needs of their staff, students and researchers –– thus continuing to enrich their research experience without concern for affordability of information access.

Liam Earney, Team Manager at JISC Collections said, “This is an immensely valuable resource, but up to now it would not have been within reach of many institutions in our community because of financial constraints on individual university resources. In addition to the significant cost savings for UK institutions, our researchers can now save time by searching for the articles they need online and can further enhance the research experience by stimulating the discovery of articles that may have otherwise been overlooked, forgotten or ignored. Information contained in these American Chemical Society journals can be utilized by students for their coursework and by faculty for teaching and learning materials across different subjects and courses. At a stroke, this agreement makes all this material available to all who want and need to use it, which is part of our ongoing commitment to widening access to essential research material, especially for some of the more specialist subject areas, which many smaller institutions simply would not be able to afford.”

Institutions interested in implementing access to the ACS Legacy Archives will need to complete a license agreement governing terms of use. For further information, please go to www.jisc-collections.ac.uk.

About the American Chemical Society

The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization, chartered by the U.S. Congress, with a multidisciplinary membership of more than 160,000 chemists and chemical engineers. It publishes numerous scientific journals and databases, convenes major research conferences and provides educational, science policy and career programs in chemistry. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

About JISC Collections

JISC Collections, whose mission is to support UK education and research by delivering affordable, relevant and sustainable online content, procured access to the ACS Legacy Archive and negotiated the license on behalf of colleges, universities and research councils in the UK. It was established as a mutual trading company by the UK and higher education funding councils in 2006 to negotiate with publishers of online information and other owners of digital content. The range of resources licensed for use by such agreements constitutes a large national collection of online resources for education and research. JISC Collections is funded by JISC. For further information, please go to http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk.