JISC

A major new resource giving librarians access to a wealth of information on key academic resources is launched today. The free resource, developed by JISC Collections in association with Nick Andrews Consultancy, provides quick and easy comparisons of the major bibliographic and citation databases currently in use by the academic community, including Web of Science, Scopus, ABI Inform, British Humanities Index and many more.

With feedback from the library community regularly suggesting that the high cost, profusion and complexity of these databases make the task of evaluating them difficult and time-consuming, JISC Collections commissioned and funded the new resource, bringing together a national user panel of librarians and information professionals to guide its development.

The Academic Database Assessment Tool provides details of the journal titles in each database, their date coverage, currency, as well as their functionality, editorial policy, indexing and a great deal more, and allows direct comparisons to be made between the resources and the different platforms on which they are available. Information can be exported into spreadsheets, allowing up to date lists of titles to be created.

Initial testing of the resource – which will continue to be developed in response to feedback – has been extremely positive, with librarians and publishers already welcoming it as an important resource which for the first time allows comparisons of the most popular databases.

Tony Kidd, Assistant Director at Glasgow University Library, Librarian and member of the user panel, said: 'Library staff are very much looking forward to using the new Academic Database Assessment Tool. These databases are generally very expensive and it's vital that we know as much as possible about the services, in order to employ scarce resources to the best effect. Although in some ways this is an obvious idea, it has taken JISC funding to bring it to reality, and we very much hope that it will continue to be available, and updated, in the future.'

New CEO of JISC Collections Lorraine Estelle said: ‘This is a really important resource for librarians, publishers and others, giving information not available anywhere else. Every step of its development has been - and will continue to be - guided by the needs of librarians and information professionals, and we are delighted that it has already been so well-received.’

Access the new resource .

For further information, please contact Liam Earney on 020 7848 1716 or l.earney@jisc.ac.uk