The following is an explanation of HighWire's institutional subscription management system and toolbox.

The tools provided on this site will help enable you to manage many of your subscriptions to HighWire-hosted titles in one place. You will be able to utilize some tools by signing in to your HighWire account, while other tools require the additional security step of associating your subscriptions.

Some points to keep in mind as you use these tools:

• HighWire, a division of the Stanford University Libraries, provides a hosting platform, technology, community and services for scholarly publishers. We do not own, sell, edit, nor make the business decisions for the electronic content we host.
• Subscriptions are an arrangement between the individual publisher/owner of the title and your library. Publishers send your information to HighWire electronically, so that the system can provide online access for your patrons. If you have any questions about or problems with a subscription, please contact the publisher's subscriptions staff or submit a message via the Feedback/Contact Us page of the specific site.
• A handful of the publishers we work with do not allow administrators to manage their subscriptions using the tools on the HighWire portal (such as usage statistics, or library IP management). This is their decision, not ours.
• Please contact us at any time if you need assistance or explanation.

Create a HighWire Account

The first step to using the administrator tools is to create a HighWire account.

• In order to access the administrator tools, it is important to register for a HighWire account using the same email address provided to the publisher when an online subscription was created. This may not be the same as your personal email address at your institution.
• If another administrator has already created an account for your institution using a shared email address (e.g., elibrary @myuniversity.edu), there is no need to create a new account, as long as that is the sole email address used to administer subscriptions.
• If you are taking over a HighWire account for a colleague that is no longer at your institution, please contact us so that we can make the necessary suggestions for your assumption of the existing account.
• You may share a HighWire account with more than one administrator at your institution by adding their email address(es) to your account. However, please confirm this in advance with your colleagues. Once combined, they will be unable to create HighWire accounts of their own with those addresses.

Using the Administrator Tools

After creating or signing in to your HighWire account, you will be ready to take advantage of some of the administrator tools.

Tools available with account login:

• Titles you administer: displays all titles administered by the email address(es) in your HighWire account.

  All titles administered at your institution: displays all titles administered by anyone sharing the same domain as the email address(es) in your account. (Commercial domains, such as yahoo.com, gmail.com, etc. are excluded from this feature.)

• FAQ — View Subscriptions

  Q: Some of the titles in the list of titles administered at my institution contain the email address of a colleague no longer at my institution. How do I update the email address?

  A: If you know the administrator user name and password:
  Go to the subscriptions page on the title's online site. Follow the link to change your subscription information. Sign in with the administrator user name and password for that subscription, and make any necessary changes. If you change the email address to the one listed in your HighWire portal account, that title (or titles, if there are several titles included in that subscription) will appear in the list of titles you administer after an overnight update.

  If you do *not* know the administrator user name and password for a subscription you need to update, please submit a message via the Feedback/Contact Us link for that title, requesting an update to the administrator contact information and provide your customer number.

Usage Reports

Cross-journal usage statistics reports are based on the subscriptions you administer with the email address(es) in your HighWire account. You can generate reports in a COUNTER format (year-to-date display) or in a monthly or multi-month summary format.

• If you administer fewer than 250 subscriptions via the HighWire portal, you will see the reports in an HTML view on-screen by default. You can also receive the reports in a tab-delimited file ready for import into Excel by selecting that option.
• If you administer more than 250 HighWire-hosted titles, the reports will be emailed to you in a tab-delimited file. The default email address is the primary address on your HighWire account, but you can enter an alternate email at which to receive the report. If requesting multiple reports, enter that alternate email address for each report.
• FAQ — Usage Reports

  Q: Why is a title missing from my usage reports?

  A: There may be several possibilities:

  • The specific title does not provide usage statistics via HighWire. Check to see if that titles is on the list offering usage statistics.
    
  • The online access to that title is expired. To create a report containing only expired subscriptions, check that box on the usage reports main page.
  • The title's subscription information contains an email address different than the one(s) listed in your HighWire portal account. You can obtain the usage for such a title in one of three ways:
    1. 1. Go to the subscriptions page on the journal site and view the usage reports by signing in with the administrator user name and password.
    2. 2. If the email address in the subscription is no longer accurate, you can change the email address to the one used on your HighWire account (see View Subscriptions FAQ, above). After an overnight update, that title will then appear in your HighWire tools (in the list of titles you administer and in your usage reports).
    3. 3. Add the email address listed in the subscription to your HighWire account. (Please confirm with any current colleagues before adding their email addresses. If you add their addresses, they will not be able to create HighWire accounts of their own with those addresses.)

    If you have checked all of the above conditions and cannot determine why a title is not appearing, please contact us so that we can assist.

• Q: Why is a title appearing twice in my usage reports?

  A: If you hold more than one subscription to a title, then all subscriptions for that title will appear in your usage reports. You can differentiate the subscriptions by the subscriber number provided on the reports. Please contact the publisher directly for any questions about duplicate (or consolidating) subscriptions.

• Q: If the usage numbers are not the same for multiple subscriptions to the same title, which set of usage statistics should I use?

  A: The discrepancy is usually because the registered IP addresses in the subscriptions are inconsistent, or contain a different time period for recording usage stats. We recommend you check the following:

  • Date of online activation: if one subscription was activated at a later date, the usage will display as zero for any unactivated months.
  • Registered IPs: if the IPs listed are not the same for the two subscriptions, the usage data may vary.
  • Other modes of access: One of the subscriptions may utilize an alternate form of access, such as public user name and password, Athens authentication, etc.

  After determining the source of the discrepancy, we suggest you use the numbers for the subscription with your most accurate range of authorized IPs and other possible modes of access. And then update the subscriptions to reflect reality.

• Q: Why do my usage reports have to be emailed? Why can't I view them automatically in HTML if there are over 250?

  A: HighWire supports independent publishers with separate subscription databases. Though we can consolidate the presentation of those reports, we do not combine subscription data between publishers. We have discovered that most browsers cannot handle the size/time it takes to process a report once it passes over the 250 titles threshold.

Tools available under Manage Subscriptions

An additional security step is required for you to utilize the remainder of the HighWire administrator tools. You will need to associate subscriptions with your HighWire account to take advantage of the IP management, OpenURL configuration setup, etc.

Associate your subscriptions

• All subscriptions that are administered by the email address(es) in your HighWire account will be listed on the association page. If you would like to add other subscriptions to the list, follow the link: "I have more subscriptions to HighWire-hosted journals. Give me a journal list to pick from."
• To associate titles, be prepared to provide the administrator user name and password designated when online access was activated for each subscription.
• If you are the current administrator and do not have access to this information, you may request a new password from a link on the subscriptions page on the particular the site. Or you may submit a message via the journal's Feedback/Contact Us page for assistance.
• After you enter a valid administrator user name and password for a subscription and press submit, the newly associated title(s) will appear in the lower section of the List My Subscriptions page. Continue entering administrator user names and passwords until all desired subscriptions are associated.
• There is no need to uncheck subscriptions as you associate titles. Only those titles matching the entered user name and password will be associated. All remaining titles will appear on the list until you enter the correct information for each subscription.

• After you associate titles, any subscriptions for which you have registered IP addresses will appear on the IP management section of the HighWire portal. The IP management pages will be populated with default IP Groups from these subscriptions, but we recommend that you create new IP Groups for easier management and then delete the default groups. See our IP Management Overview document for more information on this approach to centralized IP management.

• Enter your OpenURL information (Resolver Base URL and link text) and apply it to your selected associated titles. Additional help.

• For publishers that support Shibboleth authentication, you can set up and manage your profiles for access. Additional help .