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RSS feedsJohn Wiley & Sons is to put online all its journal back issues, dating to 1799. The backfile will contain 7.5 million pages and will be completed by 2007.
The digitisation programme will build on backfile collections currently offered by Wiley Interscience, the on-line arm of John Wiley & Sons, which includes Angewandte Chemie International Edition, Biotechnology, Biochemistry and Biophysics, Chemistry, Materials Science, Neuroscience, and Polymer Science.
More than 20 collections will be available by 2007.
The new journal backfiles will also be grouped into collections of scientific disciplines and sold for a one-off access fee per collection. Dessi Schachne, Interscience backfiles marketing manager, said the contents will be tightly defined with no overlap.
She acknowledged that, as the number of collections increases and librarians are able to assess their usage patterns, there may be pressure to break up the collections and offer titles individually.
"For now we've decided to integrate the digitised resources into collections and to sell them in pre-packaged collections. We are looking towards not having pre-defined collections and selling individual journals. However, right now we are having good success selling journals the way they are and will continue with that until customers won?t buy it that way," she said.
An initial schedule has been released. In June, the Journal of Pathology backfile and the Genetics and Evolution backfile collection will be added to the list of digitised archival journal articles, and the Numerical Engineering backfile collection will appear in August. The Chemistry Societies backfile collection will be released in September, the Physics and Astronomy collection in November, and Medicine in December. Articles will be available online in searchable, printable, high resolution PDF format.
