Immunology Today Online (ITO)

Immunology Today is one of the world's leading review journals, with an ISI impact factor of more than 24. It is a monthly magazine-like title, with a wide individual and institutional subscription base. (The Elsevier review magazines are the exception to the rule in that they have significant individual subscriptions.) In 1994 Immunology Today's publishing staff decided it was a good title to launch also in an electronic version. They worked with OCLC to make it a part of the OCLC Electronic Journals Online collection, initially offered via proprietary Guidon software and launched in January 1995.

As with other journals then and now making their initial on-line appearance, the first period of use was without charge. A test bed developed of about 5% of the individual subscribers to the paper version and 3% of the library subscribers. In time, there was a conversion to paid subscriptions, with the price for the combined paper and electronic personal subscriptions being 125% of the paper price. (Subscribers were not required to take both the paper and electronic versions-but only three people chose to take electronic only.) At the time that OCLC ended the service at the end of 1996 and we began the process of moving subscribers to a similar Web version of our own, the paid subscription level for individuals was up to about 7.0% of the individual subscribers and 0.3% of the institutional subscribers.

The poor take-up by libraries was not really a surprise. At the beginning, libraries did not know how to evaluate or offer to patrons a single electronic journal subscription as opposed to a database of journals. (There is a steady improvement in this area, provoked in part by the journals-notably The Journal of Biological Chemistry -offered via High Wire Press.) How do you let people know it is available? How and where is it available? And is a review journal-even a very popular review journal-the place to start? It apparently seemed like more trouble than it was worth to many librarians.

In talking with die individual subscribers-and those who did not subscribe-it was clear that price was not a significant factor in their decisions. The functionality of the electronic version was the selling point. It has features that are not in the paper version and is, of course, fully searchable. That means the value was, in part, in efficiency-the ease with which you find that article that you recalled reading six months ago but don't remember the audior or precise month or the

ease with which you search for information on a new topic of interest. The electronic version is a complement to the paper, not a substitute. Those individuals who chose not to subscribe either were deterred by the initial OCLC software (which had its problems) and may now be lured back via our Web version or they have not yet seen a value that will add to their satisfaction with paper. But their hesitation has not been a question of price.