DR

AF

T

Attachment 1 Statement of Need Statement of Need

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Oceanic and Atmospheric Research Office of Science Support

NOAA Central and Regional Libraries

Elsevier ScienceDirect Subscription and Open Access Publishing

I. GENERAL REQUIREMENTS

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), NOAA Central and Regional Libraries (NCRL) requires online full-text archival access to 32 peer reviewed scientific journals and the Freedom Collection for NOAA-wide access, as well as several monographic series titles. These titles are essential to NOAA research and are currently anticipated to be available only from the publisher, Elsevier, via its online journal platform, ScienceDirect.

Additionally, NOAA, OAR, NCRL requires an annual Open Access publishing allocation for NOAA corresponding authors to publish up to 39 open access articles in Elsevier hybrid journals each year, with all publishing costs fully included within the Firm-Fixed-Price (FFP) of this requirement.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Accessibility (Section 508):

Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (29 U.S.C. 794d), as amended by the Workforce Investment Act of 1998, and the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board Electronic and Information (EIT) Accessibility Provisions (36 CFR part 1194), require that, unless an exception applies, all EIT products and services developed, acquired, maintained, or used by any Federal department or agency permit:

A. Federal employees with disabilities to have access to and use information and data that is comparable to the access and use of information and data by Federal employees who are not individuals with disabilities; and

B. Members of the public with disabilities seeking information or services from a Federal agency to have access to and use of information and data that is comparable to the access and use of information and data by members of the public who are not individuals with disabilities.

II. BACKGROUND

The NOAA Library Network has provided online access to Elsevier content on a title-by-title and location-by-location basis since approximately 1995, with the NOAA Central Library coordinating the purchase for 13 libraries via one procurement since approximately 2013. In 2020, the NOAA Central Library and Boulder Labs Library completed a study of the pricing of this purchase model, comparing it with usage of the journals across the NOAA Library Network and determined that NOAA was not well served by the current pricing model. To ensure better return on NOAA’s investment, NOAA requires a more cost-effective NOAA-wide pricing model, which will provide increased access to more titles via the Freedom Collection, expand access to more users (those not currently served by a physical library facility), and cost significantly less than the previous model.

In addition, historically, access to science literature has been provided through subscriptions. That model is changing with the growth of the publishing model known as “gold open access,” where authors pay an Article Processing Charge (APC) to a publisher to make their article immediately available in full-text on the publisher’s website. Before, authors may have paid charges, but they were usually related to page lengths or special typographic capabilities. Now, reading access is migrating from the journal level to the article level, and payment from subscriptions to APCs. APC spending at NOAA is decentralized and primarily spent via purchase card purchases making it difficult to track spending or trends. NCRL has been contacted several times by scientific personnel who are concerned about escalating costs for APCs and inefficiencies related to the tracking of federal funds for APCs. The NOAA Library seeks to reduce the cost of APCs for NOAA articles published in Elsevier journals via the use of a centralized fund managed by the Library.

III. TITLES REQUIRED

A. Archival Access Titles - provided NOAA-wide with pricing based on publisher list price times a multiplier

T

Attachment 1 Statement of Need (based on the number of libraries owning a specific title in 2020, NOAA Author Publications/Citations, and potential use as extrapolated from past use by the NOAA Network) and agreed upon by NOAA Library Network.

1. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology

2. Aquaculture

3. Aquatic Toxicology

4. Atmospheric Environment

5. Atmospheric Research

6. Biological Conservation

7. Chemosphere

8. Deep Sea Research Part I & II

9. Dynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans

10. Ecological Economics

11. Ecological Modelling

12. Environmental Modelling & Software

13. Environmental Pollution

14. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science

15. Fisheries Research

16. Harmful Algae

17. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management

18. Journal of Environmental Management

19. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology

20. Journal of Great Lakes Research

21. Journal of Hydrology

22. Journal of Marine Systems

23. Journal of Sea Research

24. Marine Environmental Research

25. Marine Policy

26. Marine Pollution Bulletin

27. Ocean & Coastal Management

28. Ocean Modelling

29. Progress in Oceanography

30. Remote Sensing of Environment

31. Science of the Total Environment

32. Trends in Ecology & Evolution

B. Monographic Titles - provided enterprise-wide.

1. Advances in Geophysics

2. Advances in Marine Biology

3. Advances in Ecological Research

4. Encyclopedia of Ocean Sciences

5. Fish Physiology

C. Freedom Collection - a collection of over 2,000 Elsevier journal titles from 1995, provided on a non-archival basis.

D. Open access publishing:

1. Allowance to publish up to 39 open access articles on an annual basis, fully included within the FFP price.

IV. TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS

A. Online access to full-text articles in Elsevier journals from 1995 (or the first year of publication if after 1995) to the present via one consistent interface with sophisticated search and retrieval functionality that enables the user

T

Attachment 1 Statement of Need to maximize the effectiveness of their knowledge discovery process.

B. Ability to publish NOAA corresponding author articles in open access Elsevier journals.

C. Access to an online activity management tool to efficiently manage publishing activity.

D. Ability for users to link directly from citations to referenced articles on other platforms.

E. Ability for users to set up alerts for new articles that match saved search queries, email articles to colleagues, and set up lists of favorite journals.

F. Downloadable COUNTER compliant usage reports, as well as journal coverage reports that show coverage start and end dates for every title, International Standard Serial Number (ISSN), quick Uniform Resource Locator (URL) links to every title, title changes and discontinued titles, and titles by subject classification.

G. Access to help screens, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), and user tips.

H. Accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

V. PROBLEM RESOLUTION

A. Problems

1. Problems will be limited to the following items:

i. Access issues;

ii. Licensing issues; and

iii. Authentication issues.

2. These issues will be worked out between the contractor and the NOAA Central Library.

B. Notification

1. As problems are identified, the NOAA Central Library shall notify the contractor of these problems and send any available documentation to assist in the problem resolutions.

C. Resolution.

1. The contractor shall handle all correspondence to resolve authentication, access, and other online issues.

The contractor shall also resolve problems the NOAA Library Network experiences with e-resources if it becomes necessary.

VI. PARTICIPATING LIBRARIES

NOAA Central Library 1315 East West Highway, 2nd Floor Silver Spring, MD 20910