Electronic Journals as a Potential Solution to Escalating Serials Costs

Abstract

Research libraries are currently facing a dramatic escalation of the cost of managing their serials collections. The cost of maintaining scientific, technical, and medical (STM) journals is increasing at a particularly rapid rate because of (1) significant subscription price increases and (2) the proliferation of ever more specialized journals that must be added to the collection. Together, these two factors threaten to overwhelm the serials budgets of even the wealthiest libraries. To cope with this situation, libraries are coming to measure their collections not merely by ownership of journals but rather by access to journals. At present, access most often comes about through utilization of interlibrary loan procedures or document delivery services. In the future, full text electronic access will become more commonplace. This paper summarizes the budgetary issues facing serials librarians in research libraries. It then discusses the evolution of electronic publishing from its origins in electronic bibliographic access to monographs as it moves toward full text access to electronic nais. Although the rise of electronic publishing is viewed as part of an inevitable progression from electronic bibliographic databases, electronic journals will coexist with print journals for the foreseeable future. The paper concludes that electronic journals provide a preferable alternative to printed academic journals in that electronic publishing facilitates more efficient communication among scholars at lower cost. Moreover, electronic publishing could lead to a resurgence of the university press with a proportionate decline in the role of commercial (STM) publishers. Such restructuring of the academic publishing industry would be expected to result in significant reductions in the prices of scientific journals. Librarians should play an active role in the transformation or else they risk being left behind.