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Advice on Existing Subscription

This Publisher-to-Agent message is used as part of an exchange, to synchronize and verify the information held by the two parties for each continuing title and each existing subscription sold via that agent. Sufficient information is exchanged so that titles and subscriptions can be uniquely identified, but the message carries no prices or values. Thus it supports an advisory and quality assurance exercise and is not itself intended to support sales transactions.

In principle the message could be used at any time by prior agreement between business partners to provide a formal acknowledgement of a subscription purchase or renewal. However, it is typically used by the publisher some months in advance of the peak calendar-year renewal season. The agent normally then evaluates the publisher’s data and responds with either confirmations or amendments as necessary.

Users of the AES message may optionally also include additional data records concerning E-Journal Information from the Publisher. These records carry information related to registration and access for e-journals, such as reference strings, user IDs and passwords that customers may require in order to enable access to the online subscriptions they have purchased. Given the time sensitivity and market expectations for access to online resources, it is strongly recommended that E-Journal Information from the Publisher be exchanged as rapidly and frequently as possible to avoid delays.

More detailed information on the structure and usage of the Advice on Existing Subscription message can be found in the AES Guidelines (PDF format).

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