Why have you made this decision?
When we were given the news of the funding reduction for Intute, we were asked to look into alternative ways forward for Informs as a separate service. Over the last year we conducted a full technical review and market research to help us decide on our options for moving forward. Both the market research and the technical review revealed that there is no sustainable away to keep Informs running in its current form at Mimas. Although institutions would pay for Informs in principle, the number of subscribers would not provide enough income to sustain the service. We also learned that the transition from a free to a paid-for model must be supported by significant improvements and enhancements, but the technical review highlighted that some technical issues (most notably the problem with pages opening in new windows and obscuring the tutorial) are beyond our control and cannot be fixed. These two findings together told us that we simply would not be able to raise enough subscriptions to keep Informs running here so, after consultation with the Informs Advisory Group and JISC, we decided that introducing a subscription would not be a feasible way forward. Please see the reports for more information.
What will happen to Informs now that Intute has closed?
JISC have agreed that we can keep Informs running at Mimas until December 2011. We will be investigating making Informs an Open Source piece of software so that anyone will be able to install and use Informs within their own institutions. We are currently looking into what this means in practice. We will provide full documentation and help to make this as easy as possible and, as we're keeping Informs open until December 2011 at Mimas, there would also be staff on hand to help you through this process.
What will happen to my tutorials?
We will be happy to make your own institutions' tutorials available to you. You must install the open source version of Informs for these to work, but technical support will be available to guide you through the process. If you think you would like to take copies of your tutorials, please contact us with an expression of interest before the end of September 2011. If you do not contact us before December 2011, you will be unable to access your tutorials.
Will we still have access to other institutions tutorials?
Unfortunately, once we stop hosting Informs in December 2011, you will no longer be able to access the database of tutorials from other institutions.
When will the open source version of Informs be available?
We hope to make the open source version available in the Autumn. We will be sending out updates though our Informs-users JISCMail list, so please sign up here if you want to keep up to date with developments. http://www.informs.intute.ac.uk/contact.html
What technical support will I need to install the open source version of Informs?
We will provide full technical documentation to support you through the process of installing Informs locally and more information will be made available over the next few months. We will also provide some technical support through the Informs helpdesk until December 2011. Please see the technical faqs for more information.
Can I still register to use Informs?
We are unable to accept new registrations, but existing account holders will be supported until December 2011.
Can we pay for Informs?
We have investigated this option over the last year, and we have conducted market research with librarians. Our findings indicated that moving to a payment model would not provide a realistic funding option for Informs.
