TU Delft Library manages the scientific collection for the faculties. The aim is to provide a relevant, up-to-date and sustainable collection of information resources for research and education. For the supporting services, we manage essential resources for the performance of their tasks.
The Library: purchases (e)books, subscriptions or access to sources for the entire TU Delft (employees and students). In addition, we negotiate with publishers for open access publishing in some of these sources, through the so-called read & publish deals.
Purchase
It is possible for anyone within Delft University of Technology to make a request to purchase sources through a substantiated purchase suggestion.
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- Access is purchased for the whole of TU Delft.
- Specifically for: researchers, lecturers, students and non-scientific staff.
- There are currently no possibilities to screen off digital resources and make them accessible only to a specific group.
- The subject must be relevant to research, education and/or essential for TU Delft's support services.
- The content is unique.
- There are no other sources with the same or very similar content. In case of doubt, the applicant will be contacted.
- The costs can be justified on the collection budget.
- Digital sources for multiple users at the same time are preferred.
- Print sources can be requested, with a good substantiation.
- Institutional access is possible and with a limited exchange of data.
- It is (technically) possible to include the source in the collection.
- The request for acquisition is made by a concerned, content expert.
- Students need agreement from a content expert, such as a lecturer, researcher or team leader.
- If there is no response to an additional request from the collection team, no purchase is made.
- We do not purchase on the basis of denial reports or offers from publishers.
Sometimes it is not possible for the Library to procure a resource. This is often due to restrictions imposed by the publisher. If you want to know more about this, read, for example, this blog on why some e-books cannot be purchased.
- Access is purchased for the whole of TU Delft.
Evaluation
After receiving a purchase suggestion and/or when renewing a subscription, an evaluation is done by the collection team. These evaluations are substantiated with analytical data such as:
- Subject areas
- Usage statistics
- Delft publishing behaviour
- Financial aspects
- Contribution to Open Science goals
The aim of the TU Delft Library is to make studying and publishing as easy as possible within the limits of the collection budget. A deal made by the library is therefore not an endorsement of the publishers of these resources. The choice of what to use as a source, or where to publish lies with the staff and students of TU Delft. The role of the TU Delft Library is to advise, inform and facilitate in this.
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- Notable high cost and/or low resource usage
- The average price increase over the past 3 years is more than 5% (in the original currency) for no apparent reason/no justification
- An alternative source with similar content has been offered
- The source contains less than 2 TU Delft publications in the past 2 years
- The source has been cited less than 2 times by TU Delft researchers in the past 2 years
- A printed subscription has been requested less than 2 times in the past 2 years
- A digital option has become available for a paper source
- Concerns have been raised about the quality and/or 'predatory' practices of a resource (OA journals)
- The Library uses DOAJ to check if a journal title is included, these do a check for quality and 'predatory' behaviour.
- Sometimes an individual title from a publisher may be problematic, but this does not imply that all titles from that publisher are suspect.
