Partnership helps developing-country libraries manage current awareness

University and research libraries in developing countries will benefit from a new collaboration between JournalTOCs and INASP. Access to JournalTOCs Premium will be provided free for eligible INASP partner consortia for 17 months from 1 April 2014. This, say the partners, will enable participating libraries to develop and manage effective scholarly journal current awareness services for their researchers.

Based at the School of Mathematical & Computer Sciences at Heriot-Watt University, JournalTOCS Premium is a current awareness subscription service providing effective customisations to research, academic, commercial and institutional library and resource centres worldwide. It is the institutional version of JournalTOCs, described as the largest, free collection of subscription and open-access journal Tables of Contents.

The JournalTOCs Premium customisations for INASP consortia, developed as part of the EPSRC-funded JEMO project, will give library users in participating libraries fast and easy discovery, alerts and access to the full-text of the most current papers published in the electronic journals to which the libraries subscribe. This includes (where applicable) journal content negotiated by INASP from over 40 major publishers, such as Annual Reviews, Bentham Science, Cambridge University Press, De Gruyter, Emerald, IOP, Mary Ann Liebert, Nature Publishing Group, Oxford University Press, Palgrave Macmillan, Sage, Springer, Taylor & Francis and Wiley. 

In addition, content from INASP's Journal Online Projects (Bangladesh Journals Online, Latin America Journals Online, Mongolia Journals Online, Nepal Journals Online and Sri Lanka Journals Online) has been added to JournalTOCs and is included in the service.

Kay Raseroka, a past director of the library at the University of Botswana, past president of IFLA, and member of the board of trustees of INASP, said, 'I am delighted that this project is going ahead.  It will help researchers in less developed countries to keep abreast of new scholarly papers as well as giving librarians an important role in the process.  Through the inclusion of the INASP Journals Online content, much of which is open access, it will also improve the accessibility and visibility of research from developing countries.'

As well as gaining free access to JournalTOCs Premium, INASP and participating libraries will provide feedback and help JournalTOCs in the development of consortia versions of its subscription product for institutions.