Report - Impact of CNSLP

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Impact of the Canadian National Site Licensing Project

The Canadian National Site Licensing Project (CNSLP) is a 3-year demonstration project being supported by the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and 64 universities and their partners. CNSLP’s budget is approximately $50 million, of which $47 million is devoted to purchasing content. Funds come primarily from CFI ($20 million) and individual universities and their partners ($30 million), including 9 provincial governments, and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. CNSLP is one of the first projects of its type in the world to license electronic publications to multiple universities, at a national level. CNSLP’s mandate is to license publications primarily in the fields of science, technology, environment and medicine (STM). As such, it is creating a national “digital library” of scientific publications.

CNSLP’s goal is to build Canada's university research capacity by increasing the quantity, breadth and depth of published scholarly content available to academic researchers throughout the country. As such, CNSLP could be a valuable tool in helping the federal government to fulfil its promise to move Canada from 15th place internationally to 5th place by 2010. CNSLP is striving to transform the research environment by speeding the transition from print-based to digital and value-added forms of scholarly content. To achieve this, it has developed new business and service models by leveraging the buying power of individual Canadian universities and influencing the international scholarly publishing marketplace.

This report is an assessment of CNSLP’s experience. It is a synthesis of 2 studies that were commissioned to assess the impact of CNSLP against the project’s original goals and objectives. One study focussed on the impact of CNSLP on university researchers – the end users of the scientific publication – from the time of CNSLP inception to 2003. A second study concentrated on CNSLP’s impact on university libraries, as reported by library directors in 2003. In addition, this report incorporates information provided by CNSLP concerning participating libraries’ “net gain” in their journal holdings.