Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

	Library Materials Budget Reduction
	Journal Cancellations
	FAQs
	The Crisis in Scholarly Communication
	What Can Faculty Do?
	SHERPA

 

The University Libraries conducted a major journal cancellation project in 2002. Why was another one necessary in 2003?

In the Spring of 2002, the Library and faculty began a collaborative process to cut $396,000 from journal expenditures. This effort provided the University with a small cushion against the effects of inflation in the costs of journal subscriptions. However, the economic situation deteriorated much more quickly and worse than we had earlier anticipated in the spring when undergoing the budget reduction process. There are several reasons for this, including the 17 percent decrease in endowments and the increased costs to renew our online electronic resources, along with no increase in university funding for the libraries for the past two years.

The cost of existing journals continues to go up dramatically every year. There are several explanations for these increases, including escalating production costs, unfavorable exchange rates, and unusually high inflation on many foreign titles. The Library's budget increases at a much slower rate. All research libraries have faced this problem, and most have had to conduct several cancellation projects especially in the last 15 years.

What criteria were used to decide which journals to cancel?

The decision to cancel a journal is a complex one. The most critical element in deciding which journals to cancel is consultation with faculty, students and other users about the journals they consider most critical to teaching, learning and research. In addition, librarians making the final decisions considered a number of other factors including the cost and price history of a journal, the use of the journal, including use of current and recent issues, whether and where a journal title is indexed, the availability of the title through other vehicles, including journal aggregator databases, commercial document delivery, interlibrary loan, etc., and impact factors and the reputation of the journal.

What other actions has the Libraries taken to reduce spending?

During the fall of 2002, the Libraries cancelled the paper versions of those titles received in digital form from the major publishing packages (Academic Press, Elsevier, Kluwer, Springer and Wiley) resulting in a savings of $113,000. These five packages have titles across the many disciplines, but primarily the sciences, business, economics, and some titles in other social sciences. A total of 891 duplicate journals in paper, still available in e-formats were cancelled. More recently the Libraries have cancelled print versions of electronic journal titles published by Project Muse, Oxford University Press, Blackwell Publishing, Cambridge Press and a number of other publishers in an effort to retain the broadest possible content. A total of 1000+ titles have been cancelled in print in lieu of electronic access only.

We also changed our North American approval plan requirements. In the past, we required the delivery of hard bound copies of all materials available in that format. Starting in March 2003, we have required the delivery of trade paper bound editions of monographs when both hardcover and trade paper bound are available simultaneously.

Other actions include:

Cutting 12.75 positions. We are presently filling positions only with internal hires except in extraordinary circumstances.

Cutting the number of student employee hours by 50 percent.

Reducing the binding budget in anticipation of fewer physical serial volumes to bind.

Cutting service desk hours of operation.

How will I get the articles I need from the journals the Library cancelled?

Our Interlibrary Loan Service can provide you with copies of articles from journals not held by the Library, within the limitations imposed by copyright law. This service is provided at no charge to the requestor.

You may still be able to access full text of the title through one of our online aggregator databases. Our e-Journal Locator allows you to look up a title to see if we can access it online.

How did our subscriptions to large publisher packages like Elsevier ScienceDirect and Wiley Interscience affect the cancellation project?

Consortial deals with the North East Regional Libraries (NERL) for several publisher packages of e-journals have greatly enhanced our access to journal literature, adding hundreds of previously unavailable titles to those already available. The contractual basis for these deals requires us to maintain the business arrangement for a specific period—usually two or three years—in return for limits on price increases and the broadened access mentioned above. As a consequence, during these last two rounds of cancellations, we were not able to cancel the journals of certain publishers and save the entire cost of the journal. What we were able to do with many of the publisher packages was to cancel the print copy and keep a subscription to the electronic version. By canceling the print, we were able to save a varying percentage of the cost of the journal, usually between 5-20%. These packages include titles primarily in science, business and social science from five publishers: Academic, Elsevier, Kluwer, Springer and Wiley. Together, they provide access to 2,993 journals. We made the decision to cancel 891 print journal subscriptions that are duplicated in these packages.

How can I determine which titles the Libraries have cancelled?

A complete list of titles cancelled for Fiscal Year 2002/2003 and Fiscal Year 2003/2004 appears below:

List of Journal Cancellations

Can I help by donating my personal subscriptions to the Libraries?

Individuals often offer to provide their personal copies to the Libraries. The Libraries appreciate the generosity of such offers, but in most cases, publishers have different pricing structures for individuals and institutions and the cost to individuals is typically much less. Publishers do not expect the personal copy to be used in a Library, and doing so may violate a subscription agreement. In addition, arrangements for using personal copies may result in significant delays, gaps in coverage, and other problems for library patrons.

The library does, however, often need selected issues of a journal which have been lost from the collection. We always welcome offers from faculty who are in the process of discarding personal issues and would be willing to provide us with ones we are missing from our collection.

What is the best way that I can participate and help with this process?

There are several ways in which faculty and others can assist the Libraries in addressing this problem.

Get involved with your Library. Help the subject specialist for your discipline to identify titles whose cancellation will do the least harm. We need the help of faculty and other informed users to make the best possible decisions under the circumstances.

Give extra consideration to where you publish your papers. Look at the cost of the journals when you submit your papers for publication or are asked to serve on an editorial board. Consider what the publisher asks you to do with your copyright.

Become involved in the issues. Consider the impact of these increasing prices upon the communication of research in your field. Reduced access to information caused by irresponsible pricing ultimately harms faculty, researchers, and the students. For a discussion of many of these issues, see the article "To publish and perish", published in Policy Perspectives, a publication of the Pew Higher Education Roundtable and the Knight Collaborative. Another good source is the "Create Change" site, sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries and SPARC.

What possible long-term solutions are the University Libraries considering to manage the escalating cost of journals?

Libraries and universities are investigating alternatives to the current model of scholarly publishing: a faculty member writes an article and gives away rights to a commercial publisher; the publisher sells the article (in journal) back to the university at high prices. For example, the SPARC initiative is a collaborative effort between research libraries and scholarly societies to develop lower cost journals, which are equivalent in focus and content to many high-cost commercial publications.

Libraries and universities have become much more vocal on the issue of journals inflation. In some cases, publishers with extraordinary high price increases have seen a much higher rate of cancellations.

New methods of electronic document delivery help to defray the costs of carrying expensive, critical, but low-use titles. Articles can be purchased on an “as needed” basis. Although the costs of an individual article can be quite high, this method might still be less expensive than a subscription.

Have other universities had to cancel journals in recent years?

Yes, journal cancellation projects have become almost routine for academic libraries. Even well-funded libraries must deal with extreme price inflation for scholarly periodicals: recent cancellation projects have taken place at Yale, Dartmouth, Cornell, MIT, Indiana, Iowa and many other schools.

Whom do I contact for more information?

Each program or department within the University has a librarian assigned who is responsible for collection development and management activities for subjects important to that field. The collection management librarian for your subject area has been working with your department and may be contacted for more information. If you don’t know who the librarian in your field is, see the list of subject specialists. General questions may be addressed to Gay Dannelly, Associate Director for Resources and Collection Services.

 

> Back To Top