Implementation of ISI's Electronic Library Project at Purdue University: Criteria for selection and publisher pricing schemes

Purdue University participated in the Electronic Library Project (ELP), a pilot project of the Institute for Scientific Information designed to provide full-text, desktop access to journals indexed in the Life Sciences edition of Current Contents. As an initial step, Purdue determined criteria to follow for selection of electronic subscriptions: First, a paper subscription had to be currently held. Then, either Purdue authors had demonstrated high use of the journal, or the journal was a review journal, or Purdue had recently subscribed to the title. By the end of ELF, Purdue had subscribed to 119 of the 489 journals available through the project. Had more publishers participated in ELF, Purdue would have subscribed to more journals electronically.