30 September 2019
Jisc and Wiley are digitising a collection on the history of science, and UK HE libraries and archives are invited to submit expressions of interest for their collections to be considered for digitisation as part of this innovative collaboration. Institutional collections will complement material from the archives of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS), which will also be included.
The collaboration between Jisc and Wiley is the first to offer universities a chance to influence what material is digitised by a commercial publisher.
Paola Marchionni, Head of Digital Resources for Teaching, Learning and Research at Jisc, said, “Digitising specialist archives is a costly enterprise and, over the last few years we have been exploring new business models to support digitisation of collections. This deal is a first for Jisc and Wiley and was struck in response to our members’ concern over the cost of content and the desire to democratise access to all institutions, no matter what their size or income. We are hoping this project will pave the way for similar alliances with other publishers and collections in the future.”
Through this partnership, the resulting digital collection will be free to all UK universities and colleges and, once the licences to the content expire, will be made available openly and globally password-free. Scholars and teachers will be able to freely access materials dating roughly between 1800 to the 1970s via the Wiley Digital Archives platform. The history of science collection will be available from March next year.