The transnational education (TNE) licensing pilot was initiated in response to a growing demand from university library staff for a simpler way to license resources for their students based overseas. This is part of Jisc’s TNE support programme and offer.
Creating an experience for those students studying overseas which is at least equivalent to that being delivered in the home institution is a critical element of transnational education (TNE). The expectation of TNE students is that access to key resources to support course requirements, such as journals, databases and e-books, is readily available.
Universities must currently negotiate directly with publishers for library resource access to incorporate their students and supporting staff located abroad. In turn, some publishers have indicated they would welcome a more streamlined licensing process to bring efficiencies and economies of scale, to align with Jisc’s core licensing programme.
We believe centralised negotiated agreements with publishers will relieve universities of much of this TNE burden, and go a long way to increasing the availability of affordable library resources for these learners, improving the parity of overseas student experience with their UK counterparts.
What we're doing
By using the experience of Jisc Collections in engaging with publishers and aggregators of content through this pilot project, we aim to take a leading role in establishing agreements with publishers to bring together the common interests, and pricing and licensing requirements of those delivering programmes beyond UK borders.
The project aims to develop a simple and agreed licensing approach and process, tried and tested with pilot organisations and key publishers, which keeps pace with the delivery of international education.
Following the pilot phase this will be an optional service offered through Jisc’s TNE support programme provided as an optional extra to Jisc Collection’s core UK negotiation and licensing service.
How we're doing it
The pilot project is led by Jisc Collections and guided by a steering group made of university library staff and sector agency representatives from across the UK HE sector.
Anne Horn, chair of the TNE licensing pilot and library director, University of Sheffield, said:
"The TNE pilot will provide publishers and institutions with much-needed clarity about how they can best provide parity of access to users based overseas whilst fulfilling our collective responsibilities."
What we’ve done so far
A survey of UK HEI current activities and identifying key resources
A community workshop to understand current situation, partner arrangements and complexity
Interviews with pilot participants to understand local scenarios
Engagement with sector bodies to support and develop a common TNE nomenclature
Presented a breakout session on the TNE licensing pilot at the UUKi's Transnational education: global location, local innovation conference in October 2018
This is a set of guiding principles that we ask publishers and HE librarians to review and adopt.
We will promote and negotiate for the TNE licensing approach with the pilot publishers and will provide feedback via a monthly status report.
What we're working on
Undertaking negotiations with publishers for the common TNE licensing approach on behalf of pilot project participants
Collecting and making available case studies from libraries
Continuing sector engagement to support and develop a common TNE approach
Continuing to develop the Jisc Decision Tool, and aiming to develop an interactive licensing tool
Developing an access and authentication tool kit for libraries and publishers and will explore small scale workshops to bring together relevant institutions
There are 42 libraries participating in the pilot negotiation phase, at no cost, who signed up to the TNE licensing pilot institutional participation agreement via the Jisc Collections catalogue.
If other libraries are interested in receiving updates on the pilot via its JiscMail group or have questions in relation to its status, please contact greg.ince@jisc.ac.uk.
Case study: University of Reading - an exemplar approach to differentiating TNE students and staff in response to commonplace publisher licence restrictions
