NESLI: a successful national consortium

The National Electronic Site Licence Initiative (NESLI) is an attempt to hasten the replacement of printed journals with their electronic equivalents in UK higher education. Effectively a national consortium – NESLI – aims to achieve attractive pricing models for electronic content. However, there is also a strong desire to ensure the interoperability of the various electronic services available to the academic and research community. As such, NESLI is part of the Joint Information Systems Committee’s (JISC) Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER). This paper discusses the background to the initiative, its aims and objectives, the role of the Managing Agent and what has been achieved to date, as well as the plans for the immediate future. It goes on to consider the possible implications for the world outside of UK higher education, the lessons learned so far, and the viability of the NESLI model.