Academia and document supply: unsustainable contradictions at INIST?

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to describe the current situation at the Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (INIST) the French document supply centre after their difficulties with open access articles during 2013. Design/methodology/approach – A narrative and analytical explanation by the director of INIST. Findings – That INIST will no longer service the commercial sector and will provide documents to researchers in CNRS for free and priced to French higher education establishments. The growth in open access will mean that INIST is ceasing to be an industrial scale operation and will be concerned primarily with “long tail” requests. Originality/value – Certainly, the only account in English of the difficulties that INIST has faced in the past three years and how they have been dealt with.