E-journal Consortium in India: a Comperative Study

The proliferation of E-publishing across the world have brought in a revolution in scholarly journal publication, subscription, access & delivery mechanism. E-journals are electronic equivalents of their print counter parts possessing many features. E-journals offer a range of advantages to libraries & end-users: remote access, in-built searching facilities, multi-media capabilities & reduced storage concerns. Libraries buy licenses for an ever-increasing number of E-Journals from a range of different publishers and providers. Consortium based library subscriptions to E-journals & electronic full-text Databases are picking up good momentum in India. INDEST, CSIR Consortium, IIM Consortium, INFLIBNET's Infonet, FORSA are successful ones. There are various issues relating to consortia as uninterrupted online access, perpetual access to back issues, pricing, copyright and archival solutions. It discusses the features of E-Journals, major E-Journal consortia initiatives in the country, benchmarks & models, advantages of consortia subscriptions & problems associated with consortia. It should be reached a critical mass both in terms of information products as well as the number of users.