Journal Packages Research Articles

Assessing the Value of Subscription Journal Packages and Open Access Journal Articles in a Community College Context

Introduction: Academic libraries are facing two trends: the rising cost of journal subscriptions—the ongoing ‘serials crisis’—and the increasing availability of scholarly journal articles through free, open access channels. Methods: This study analyzed the bibliographies from 116 research projects created by students across disciplines at a small community college, and classified citations to journal articles based on the simplest way students could have accessed them. Results: more than 60% of the scholarly journal articles that students used are available to them for free, while an additional 18% are available through state-sponsored database subscriptions available to any Massachusetts resident. Only 17% of the journal articles used were available to students solely through the library’s database packages, and more than half of those articles were used by students in the ADN nursing program. Discussion: These findings call into question the value of expensive subscription databases to community college libraries and suggest a pattern of diminishing return on investment and value. The trend towards cancellation of ‘big deal’ journal packages at large institutions addresses similar concerns, though the dynamics are somewhat different at small institutions. Conclusion: The paper concludes by suggesting some steps that small academic libraries might take to adapt to this changing publishing environment, in the areas of collection development and information literacy instruction, in order to better serve students.

Ratios for Evaluating Full-Text Journal Article Access: A Quantitative Study

ABSTRACT This article proposes a methodology for systematically assessing the cost of journal subscriptions. The authors of the paper (hereafter “the researchers”) established ratios comparing the list costs of journal articles as advertised by publishers against the cost per article of journal articles available in aggregated collections in library databases (hereafter “aggregating databases”). The researchers propose that the ratios can be used by libraries wishing to apply a standard methodology for assessing journal packages containing full-text articles. The study may be helpful for those librarians who seek to supplement qualitative information and other quantitative data, such as usage statistics, in order to demonstrate the library's rationale for providing journal access either by purchasing articles directly from a publisher as needed or by continuing to subscribe to an aggregating database. The aggregating databases reviewed in this study included representative aggregating databases commonly associated with the following fields of study: Social Sciences, Humanities, and Health Sciences; however, the methodology described in this article could be applied to other disciplines as well. The results of the study indicated that the ratios for Mean Cost/Package Subscription Price (MC/PSP), Median Cost/Package Subscription Price (MED/PSP) could be used in evaluating journal collections. The researchers suggest that future studies should be conducted to assess resource sharing and the availability of open access resource versions of articles as possible contributing factors to the purchase decisions associated with scholarly journal articles.

Open Access and the End of a Big Deal

After the California State University system canceled a large journal package in 2015, California State University Northridge analyzed usage and overlap data and proceeded with a subscription to a small number of single titles. This collection development decision was coupled with an attempt to improve discovery and linking for open access content. In the years since the cancelation, overall usage of the publishers journal content has remained comparable to pre-cancelation usage, while downloads of open access content have increased.

The Buyback Dilemma: How We Developed a Principle-Based, Data-Driven Approach to Unbundling Big Deals

ABSTRACT [University of Saskatchewan] is a publicly funded, medium-sized research intensive medical doctoral university in Canada. Like other academic libraries, we have been coping with the rising costs of Big Deal journal packages in the context of shrinking budgets and variable currency fluctuation between the Canadian and American Dollar. When faced with a need to cancel two Big Deal packages in order to balance our budget, we undertook a data-driven, principles-based approach. We discuss the context at [University of Saskatchewan], and the principles and steps we used to successfully determine which packages to cancel, and how to determine titles for re-subscription within a limited budget. We discuss how we compiled and used data that addresses scholarly (citation), pedagogical (downloads), and reputational (survey responses) concerns, and share the formula we developed. We also share some lessons learned and recommendations and ideas for future Big Deal assessment.

A two-stage approach to serials review: minimizing journal costs through title-by-title selection with package-based acquisition

Many academic libraries evaluate their journal holdings with an emphasis on deselection rather than selection. Likewise, many consider each journal package or full-text database as a whole, through indicators such as cost per download, without explicitly accounting for the quality of the journals included in each package. Better results can be achieved through a two-stage process that first identifies the ‘wanted journals’ most important to the university’s teaching and research programs, then objectively determines the most cost-effective means of acquiring those journals. Our procedure combines an emphasis on the quality of individual journals with an iterative database/subscription selection method that minimizes costs and avoids any bias toward the journals initially held by the library. Although the process involves considerable effort, it can be used to increase the library’s holdings of wanted journals without increasing total expenditure, or to maintain the number of wanted journals while reducing total expenditure. Our results also demonstrate that title-by-title selection of journals is not inconsistent with acquisition through full-text databases.

Elsevier Title Level Pricing: Dissecting the Bowl of Spaghetti

INTRODUCTION This study will explore the issue of pricing opacity associated with prices paid by academic libraries that have recently unbundled from the Elsevier Big Deal journal package. Additionally, this study will provide metrics for assessing the fair market value (FMV) of unbundled journal packages. The pricing metrics will assist academic libraries in negotiations of subscription and open access agreements. METHODS Pricing information was gathered from five academic libraries. The data was analyzed to arrive at two key metrics (adjustment from list price and the average cost per journal) for establishing comparables, i.e., prices paid by similarly sized institutions, to assess the collective FMVs for unbundled Elsevier journal packages. RESULTS & DISCUSSION The study results show that significant variations existed in the way institutions were charged for content. Additionally, the comparables show wide variations among institutions when measured by the overall adjustment from list price and the average cost per journal. CONCLUSION The pricing metrics developed in this study, adjustment from list price (ALP) and average cost per journal (ACJ), will help libraries assess their final net prices for individual journal subscriptions. The results will be useful to administrators, collection development personnel, and negotiating teams in understanding the prices paid by other institutions for unbundled journal packages to determine FMVs.

When to Hold Them, When to Fold Them: Reassessing “Big Deals” in 2020

ABSTRACT While cancellations of “Big Deals” at research institutions are making the headlines, small- and medium-sized schools are also addressing the issue of managing their journal packages by cancelling or unbundling major publishers’ journal packages. Although “Big Deals” were advantageous when first acquired, as the years passed, large publishers absorbed more publications annually, which brought higher costs and titles of lower relevance to the library. Each year librarians at Pepperdine University have analyzed cost per use, and each year the cost per use increased on many packages until these increases became unsustainable. Coinciding with this tipping point, alternatives to licensing entire packages emerged or became more viable. Libraries across the country realize that they no longer need to own everything. The authors go into details for each of the publishers’ “Big Deals,” present reasons why they were cancelled or restructured, the alternative solutions implemented, and what the reaction has been.

External Competition Strategy Analysis And Blue Ocean Strategy Using Strategy Management Approaches

The culinary industry contributes to the development of MSMEs in the country and requires companies to be able to increase their competitiveness, the need for a strategic management approach so that MSMEs can be competitive. Strategy formulation is used by reviewing MSMEs using the PESTLE analysis method for external environmental analysis, competitiveness analysis using the Five Force method, Ansoff Matrix method to determine market development strategies at the business unit level and Blue Ocen Strategy to determine strategies in winning the market. Data collected through interviews and observations. The results obtained show that F&B MSMEs can implement market penetration strategies by creating online stores and websites. Market development strategies can be done through Healthy Store, Retailer and consignment. Product development strategies by creating healthy subscription and journal packages, and diversifying by conducting Healthy Sessions or Workshops. From the four methods above and alternative solutions offered, it can be concluded that the most appropriate strategy to improve competitiveness is to diversify in the form of a Healthy Session or Workshop.

Keeping Science Costs in Check: A Cost per Use Review of Chemistry Journals

The sciences librarian and the electronic resources & serials librarian at Colorado College identified chemistry journal subscriptions for further investigation of usage and cost. Out of 14 chemistry-related journal titles on the renewal list from the library’s subscription agent, 8 journal titles were found to have high cost per use, based on the previous year’s price divided by number of articles downloaded. The authors considered the American Chemical Society guidelines for approval for Chemistry Departments and made sure other journal and journal package subscriptions outside these 8 titles fulfilled the ACS journal requirements. The authors then attended a Chemistry Department meeting to present these findings. Faculty agreed to cancel 6 of these titles and to add an inexpensive chemistry journal package for a newer faculty member; the net savings was $39,016.23.

Negotiating big deals: ACRL/SPARC Forum at the 2020 ALA Midwinter Meeting

At the ACRL/SPARC Forum at the 2020 ALA Midwinter Meeting in Philadelphia, three panelists discussed efforts to negotiate with vendors regarding “Big Deal” journal packages, including strategies and information that make such negotiations more effective for libraries. The three panelists provide their remarks below. Gale Etschmaier recounts negotiations between the Florida State University Libraries and Elsevier that led to the successful cancellation of their Elsevier “Big Deal.” Robin Sinn summarizes open access efforts at the Johns Hopkins University Libraries. And, finally, Jason Priem discusses his company’s product Unsub, a “data dashboard that helps libraries forecast, explore, and optimize their alternatives to the Big Deal, so they can unsubscribe with confidence.”

Seeing the Forest for Trees: Tools for Analyzing Faculty Research Output

For academic libraries, because budgetary pressures are nearly universal, it is imperative to evaluate journal packages regularly. This article presents an overview of the data and methods that the NC State University Libraries traditionally uses to evaluate journal packages and presents additional methods to expand our evaluation of publishing and editorial activity. We describe methods for downloading and analyzing Web of Science citation data to identify the most common publishers for NC State affiliated authors as well as the journals in which NC State authors publish most frequently. This article also demonstrates a custom Python web scraping application to harvest NC State affiliated editor data from publishers’ websites. Finally, this article discusses how these data elements are combined to provide a more comprehensive evaluative strategy for our journal investments.

Unbundling practice: the unbundling of big deal journal packages as an information practice

PurposeThe purpose of this article is to introduce a theoretical framework and approach for studying the evaluation and decision-making practices through which academic librarians attempt to reduce the cost of electronic journal subscriptions – an organizational practice known as the unbundling of big deal journal packages.Design/methodology/approachThe article presents a literature-based conceptual analysis of several fields to delineate the elements of the practice of unbundling of big deal journal packages. Beyond analysing the prior literature, the discussion is supported by empirical findings from a pilot study on the topic conducted by two of the article's authors.FindingsThe main finding of the article is that the unbundling of big deal packages is a case of what sociologist refers to as decision-making in a social context. By reviewing previous studies, the article identifies the social and material elements constitutive of this practice. This, in turn, allows to develop questions and concepts for future research on the topic and to position it as an area of inquiry within the field of information behaviour/practices.Originality/valueThe article is the first attempt to conceptualize the unbundling of big deal journal packages by highlighting its phenomenological status as a type of information practice. In addition, the article proposes a research approach for studying this type of information practice by drawing on insights from the information behaviour/practice literature and enriching them through practice theory contributions in organizational studies and sociology.

Building Bridges for Social Justice in Global Publishing: Seeking the Mexican Perspective

ABSTRACT At the NASIG 2019 Conference, the presenter outlined how the dominance of English-language publishers based in the Global North negatively impacts researchers in Puebla, Mexico. Universities in the Global South must compete in world-wide university ranking systems, which intensifies the pressure to compete with researchers in the Global North to publish in journals of the Global North in order to demonstrate global competitiveness and local career standing. To support those competitive publishing expectations, institutions of the Global South must also subscribe to English-language journal packages of the Global North, thus locking in a cycle of academic publishing dominance. Meanwhile, Latin America is developing quality Open Access (OA) alternatives. In May 2018, the presenter received funding from a NASIG grant to interview journal editors and librarians at universities in Puebla, Mexico. Through these interviews, the presenter sought to explore challenges for researchers publishing in Global North journals, discuss the role of OA at the interviewees’ institutions, consider the future outlook for OA in Mexico, and examine the social justice implications of the academic journal publishing ecosystem. The presenter reported on findings from the interviews and invited members to discuss how engagement with researchers from the Global South can help the global scholarly communication ecosystem become more equitable.

Developing a reusable methodology to conduct a review of library resources

In the academic year 2017–18 The Open University Library was asked to examine its collection and content acquisition policies as part of an institution-wide review of services to students and staff. For the part of the project looking at best value of the Library content service, we wanted to review the ‘higher-cost’ content held by the Library, which was in the main the larger journal packages. From the project, we developed a methodology for conducting reviews of our Library resources in much greater depth than we did previously. As part of this process, we also carried out an in-depth overlap analysis for resources that contain full text content. The reason for the development of this methodology was to identify just how much ‘redundancy’ there was in the Library collections, as well as identifying unique selling points of certain collections. Also, by examining the subject coverage of the content we reviewed, we were able to show how well our content aligned with the teaching of the University outlined in the 2018 curriculum plan. The approach we took to this project offers a fresh perspective on how such review tasks can be undertaken in libraries. The methodologies developed could provide a useful tool to others wishing to carry out a similar review.

The Big Deal: Should Libraries Stay or Should Libraries Go?

This article examines the history of the Big Deal more than 23 years after the beginning of large journal packages being offered to libraries. This article also examines solutions and alternatives to large journal packages and looks to the future of the Big Deal.

Agricultural Information and Land Grant Libraries: Past, Present, and Future

Land-grant libraries contribute to the national corpus of research through holdings of journals, books, e-books, conference proceedings, government documents, and more. Impacts on land-grant libraries and agricultural information and implications for the future landscape include a number of topics ranging from the role of journal package deals on collection development budgets to the importance of agriculturally focused professional societies. The agricultural information outlook for the future is being cultivated today. New and current information is critical but the preservation of the agricultural heritage is a necessary part of the plan.

Judging big deals—take two

ABSTRACTA follow-up to an earlier article published in this same journal in 2013, this article repeats an analysis of five Big Deal journal packages to which Hofstra University's Axinn Library subscribes. Improvements over the last study include more years of data, the removal of open access and archival content from the calculations, and a subject analysis. Results confirm the original findings that four of the Big Deals are good deals, but expand on these outcomes with a discussion of the subject breakdown of each package, the cost of individual title subscriptions, and the dangers of overreliance on usage statistics.

Publisher Package and Open Access Journals: Are Any of Them Predatory?

ABSTRACTSimilar to a study by Nelson and Huffman on the presence of predatory journals in aggregator databases, this study presents the results of a comparison between Jeffrey Beall’s List of Standalone Journals and a group of six commercial publisher and open access journal packages. A subject analysis of the predatory journals listed on Beall’s standalone journal list was also conducted along with an analysis of the trend in predatory publisher and journal growth. In the end, only a small number of predatory journals were found to exist within the publisher packages. The subject analysis of the journals on Beall’s standalone journal list revealed that most of the journals on his list were either multidisciplinary in nature or allied with science, medicine/health, and technology subjects. However, because the number of predatory journals discovered in the publisher packages was too small, a meaningful statement about the predominant subject areas of the predatory content found in the publisher packages could not be made. Finally, within the context of the publishing world at large, based on the historical development of predatory publishers and their journals, a dramatic increase in their growth is forecast. Because Beall’s lists of predatory publishers and standalone journals were often used by authors for guidance but are no longer available, several tools for evaluation of publisher and journal quality are summarized.

Maintaining collections with a flat budget

This paper focuses on the various processes, methods and tough decisions made by the University of Kansas Libraries to provide library materials while maintaining a flat collections budget for over eight years. During this period, those responsible for the Libraries’ collections have implemented quick stop- gap measures, picked all the ‘low-hanging fruit’, and eventually canceled a large journal package. This case study will help other librarians facing the reality of maintaining collections at a time when budgets, changing formats and publication practices are all obstacles to providing patrons with what they need.

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is the world’s most authoritative list of scholarly, peer-reviewed, fully open access journals, and a “must” for libraries of all types. As of August 2007, DOAJ includes over 2,800 titles, over 10% of the world’s estimated 20-25,000 peer-reviewed scholarly journal titles. This is an impressive list; in terms of numbers of titles, DOAJ compares favorably with commercial journal packages. DOAJ is growing rapidly, at a rate of more than one title per calendar day. DOAJ’s highly functional and aesthetically pleasing interface features a number of search options, including a new search option for authors looking for open access or hybrid journals to publish in. DOAJ is freely available, and working towards economic sustainability through an optional membership / sponsorship program. This article examines the DOAJ membership program in some depth. Membership fees for libraries and library consortia are an incredible bargain. The membership fee for DOAJ’s 2,800 (and growing) title list is less than the average subscription cost for a single journal in any scientific discipline, and DOAJ represents significant staff time savings for libraries. The promotional benefits of DOAJ membership are important to position libraries for leadership in the internet age, and especially in the key emerging area of scholarly communications. DOAJ is a very popular service among libraries, with a strong reputation for quality; membership or sponsorship is likely to be highly beneficial to library service providers. As a free resource, DOAJ is strongly recommended for all libraries. DOAJ titles can be included in A-Z journal lists, library catalogues or websites, and subject-specific URLs can be added to subject guides or pathfinders.