Hi, Susan--

Unfortunately, a new publisher has no legal obligation to honor the access rights granted by the previous publisher.  They may have contractual obligations with the society that produces the journal that restricts this, or they may just have internal policies that prevail.  The effect, of course, is very problematic for libraries.

Is JBJS actually switching publishers, or has the publisher (JBJS appears to be self-published, no?) just changed its policy?  In the case of a publisher changing its own access policy, the prevailing terms would be whatever licenses they have with customers, so unless a publisher that changes its own policy in violation of its own existing license agreements, it is unfortunately free to do as it wishes.  The question is, were you guaranteed that perpetual access in writing before?

This, as you note, doesn't necessarily engender goodwill from customers.  The best thing to do, it seems, is for as many subscribers as possible to contact JBJS and voice their displeasure and ask to have the access they previously had been granted restored.  This situation unfortunately has happened many times over the years with a variety of publishers who switch their business models to include a separate archive purchase.  

We are JBJS subscribers as well and will certainly look into this and contact them if we find ourselves in your situation. 

Good luck,
Elizabeth

P.S. Since you brought up the issue of publisher journal transfers, I'll mention this:  The Transfer Working Group of UKSG (which I co-chair) has been working for several years on improving the process for when journals transfer from one publisher to another.  We have a Code of Practice (version 2 is the current version, here. We are currently working on a version 3), to which publishers voluntarily sign on as "compliant," specifying that they will abide by the Code's recommendation when they transfer journals to and receive journals from other publishers.  Librarians can sign up to receive email notification of journal transfers here.  We also offer a database where you can search for previous and upcoming transfers that have been entered by Transfer-compliant publishers.

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