Department for Education - Journal Access Service

Department for Education's (DfE) intend to undertake a procurement exercise to select a contractor to provide access to electronic journal subscriptions.

The DfE funds and publishes research on gov.uk but also needs to learn from research by other organisations, both in the UK and internationally. Most high-quality research is published through academic journals. DFE need sufficient access to that research to ensure that our advice to ministers and internal policy and delivery decisions are informed by the latest insight and evidence available. Advice is often needed very quickly, so we cannot usually wait to obtain print copies; we need electronic access to as much full text access as feasible. We need coverage of the department's policy areas and disciplines that can inform policy and delivery decisions. We are looking for a one stop shop for all our journal requirements. It will need to provide a user-friendly interface that can be used by a range of staff without any specialist training, offering different levels of search sophistication for different users.

The key requirements we are looking for are

• Access to research journals covering all areas that DfE is responsible for, including early years, schools, further and higher education, and children's services.
• Providing academic scientific evidence only.
• Accessible through a single sign in.

Other essential elements

• Relevance to all DfE staff and professions including researchers, economists, other analysts, policy and delivery
• Would be useful to any large organisation including management, leadership, organisational and behaviour change.
• High level of full-text access.
• Includes international English-language evidence.
• Offers timely usage data and advice on how we can develop our coverage to better meet DfE user needs in future.
• Integrated open access content.

In order to support the development and shaping of DFE's requirement, we will be holding supplier engagement sessions via Skype. These will include open discussions to go through the Department's requirements in more detail as well as structured 1-2-1 sessions with prospective suppliers following this in which we will work through a set of questions to gain further insight of the marketplace. These discussions will be open for innovative opportunities and alternatives which fulfil our requirements from supplier input. To express your interest in this opportunity and sign up for our market engagement sessions which are scheduled to be held w/c 02/12/2019 please contact ollie.shortt@education.gov.uk. Further information can be found in the attached document.