ELVYN: The delivery of an electronic version of a journal from the publisher to libraries

The ELVYN project was a joint activity of the Standing Conference of National and University Libraries (SCONUL), Institute of Physics Publishing (IoPP), and Loughborough University of Technology. It investigated the scenario of dual publishing (electronic and print) of journals in the physical sciences by delivery of the electronic file from the publisher to academic libraries, each of which mounts the file at its own site. The journal chosen for the project is Modelling and Simulation in Materials Science and Engineering (MSMSE), published by IoPP. The stages of the project were as follows: (i) Investigation of the requirements of materials scientists and libraries at each of seven sites, chosen for their expected level of interest in the subject of the journal. (ii) Design and implementation of a system for provision of the full file (text and graphics) of MSMSE at each of the sites. (iii) Recruitment of users and collection of usage and costs data at each of the sites. The publishers' intention was not to dictate to sites what form of the database they should have, but to seek to meet the different requirements of each site. Thus, several quite different implementations have been developed. The first stage was complete by the spring of 1993 and the second by the spring of 1994. Data collection for the third phase took place during the summer of 1994. This article is the first presentation of the full results of the third phase, and also includes the conclusions of the project as a whole. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.