Most migrations happen every 3-5 years or so.

Liz Brown, Publisher Relations Manager, Project Muse described a mass migration of journals in which 90 journals migrated to the Project Muse platform from JSTOR. Some independent journals published their content on their own and were managed by university officials who had many other functions. The same content that was on JSTOR was migrated to Muse. The new platform was responsible for managing cancellations that JSTOR previously did. Communication in any migration is key. Many libraries did not initially recognize that journals had changed platforms. JSTOR communicated with publishers, helped guide the migration, and produced a helpful checklist

Duke University Press staff noted that everyone’s business models are different. During a migration, the little quirks are revealed; for example, names must be standardized and content IP addresses and overlaps must be resolved. Workarounds may be necessary.

Content on new and old platforms simultaneously and style inconsistencies etc. may really refer to the same item because of differences between platforms.

Communications strategy: Technical documentation was created for publishers to provide guidance for librarians and end users. Beta sites before launching the new platform were helpful. Library Boards were  informed about the migration because they had to authorize the move to a new platform. The timing of communications may be out of phase with what the librarians are doing. Marketing and technical communications should be separated because each of them are not useful to everyone. It is very difficult to manage 2 platforms simultaneously.

The NISO working group on platform migration represented many stakeholders. 30 migrations happened in 2 years, so vendors needed much advice.

Don Hawkins