Access LWW and Online Journals...Must We Use Ovid?
Ok I am frustrated with LWW. I am sure you are all familiar with LWW's lovely little rule that institutions must subscribe to LWW online journals through Ovid. What a pain in the royal butt. Two reasons, not all libraries have Ovid (nor want Ovid) yet they must get online access this way. For those that do have Ovid, (such as myself) it is still pretty damned annoying and inconvenient. Our users HATE browsing journals through Ovid. Plain and simple. They love doing their Medline searches on Ovid and they love the full text of article is right there with their results. BUT if they already have a citation to an article and they just want the full text, they absolutely LOATHE using Ovid. After all it is not as user friendly as the actual journal web site.
Currently I am in the process of setting up online access to our library's journals. Before we had no journals online, now we have a few. (It takes a long time). I happen to run across Circulation and all the AHA journals. According to the FAQ for institutions, "Online subscriptions are available via Ovid Technologies and include access to tables of contents, abstracts, full-text searching, full-text display, document delivery, PDFs, links to Medline and GenBank, and future tables of contents. Access is limited to computers within a particular set of internet IP addresses. You may select access to the online journal through HighWire Press, Ovid, or both. For more information and to request pricing information, please contact the Regional Ovid Sales office closest to you."
Did you just catch the confusing part? Just in case here it is again...
"You may select access to the online journal through HighWire Press, Ovid, or both."
Ok now here is the fun part. Try calling LWW's subscription help line and asking for online access to the AHA journals through Highwire. They tell you that you need to go through Ovid. Only after do you tell them that on their web site it says we have the option to access the journal through Highwire or Ovid, that they (LWW) get very confused and transfer you to somebody else. That somebody else then has to explain that you still must contact Ovid to get access, but you can tell Ovid that you want to access it through the Highwire platform. Interestingly enough, I was told this is the case with all LWW journals that were already on the Highwire platform. Regular LWW journals on LWW's site still can only be accessed through Ovid.
Interesting...If only we could access the rest of their journals from the actual journal site, life would be better.

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