Cost Of Journal Subscriptions Research Articles

Chemistry Journals

SummaryThe cost-effectiveness of STM journals has been compared within several subject areas, beginning with Henry Barschalls's work with the physics literature in the late 1980s. A new use-independent cost-effectiveness metric is proposed and calculated for journals in several chemistry subdisciplines.Publisher and year-of-publication data for seminal journal articles assigned in a graduate-level organic synthesis class are presented.The effects of publisher policies in establishing and enforcing differential subscription prices for European and non-European customers on the rise of journal subscription costs and also on possible exchange-rate profiteering are discussed.

Bridging the information gap

In a Statement of Intent signed recently at the British Medical Association in London, the six largest medical journal publishers announced a two-tiered pricing model aimed at providing affordable online access to the latest scientific information for the developing world. The increasing cost of journal subscriptions has made it all but impossible for the majority of scientific institutions in the poorest countries to keep up to date with the latest developments. Within the new pricing structure, almost 1000 of the 1240 top international biomedical journals will be available to the 100 poorest countries free of charge or at significantly reduced rates. Elsevier Science has committed to providing free access to all of its publications, including Trends in Immunology. The scheme is scheduled to start in January 2002 and will run for an initial period of at least three years. The institutions to benefit from this development will be identified individually by the end of the year. The initiative represents an important precedent in the establishment of the Health InterNetwork introduced by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan at the UN Millennium Summit last year, which aims to strengthen public health services. A key element of such improvements must be the provision of high-quality, relevant and timely health information to public health workers, researchers and policy makers. KM

Digital Libraries and the Problem of Purpose

L'auteur s'interroge sur le chemin a suivre dans la recherche et le developpement des bibliotheques electroniques aujourd'hui aux Etats-Unis, ce qui revient a poser la question du but reellement poursuivi dans cette entreprise. Il examine la facon dont cette question d'objectif se pose, dans une perspective historique, d'abord dans les bibliotheques publiques, puis dans les bibliotheques d'enseignement superieur et de recherche, avant de se pencher sur le cas des bibliotheques (ou collections) electroniques proprement dites.

The Economics of Electronic Journals

High print journal subscription costs, access to desktop publishing software, and awareness of Internet capability are among several reasons that interest in the electronic publishing of scholarly journals is increasing rapidly. The economic considerations of electronic publishing are not as familiar, however, although the fingertip accessibility of electronic journals, and in some cases, the lack of subscription charges gives the impression that electronic journal publishing is a much less costly means of publishing. Such an impression receives qualified confirmation in this article as an overview of the costs of scholarly publishing is provided, and the costs of print and electronic journals are compared. Also addressed are ways to recover costs of publishing electronic journals, and predictions for the future of such journals.

Human‐Computer Interaction and the Growing Role of Social Context

The ever increasing role that computer applications play in all phases of knowledge work has led to the call to broaden the scope of Human-computer Interation beyond the traditional measures of ease of use and consider all aspects of the users' social and organizational context. While ease of use still plays a central role, factors such as compatibility with an individual's work style, impact on social and organizational norms, overall usefulness and relative advantage all need to be considered when evaluating an information technology product

Chapter VI: Costs of Journal Subscriptions to Libraries and Patrons

Chapter VI: Costs of Journal Subscriptions to Libraries and Patrons

Academic libraries in Iowa cope with serials cutbacks

At a time when rising costs of journal subscriptions forced academic libraries in Iowa to scrutinize their continuing obligations more carefully, a group of librarians representing both the publicly and privately supported colleges and universities investigated the impact of their decisions on their aggregate serials holdings. The project was carried out by the Resource Sharing Working Group of the Cooperation Co‐ordinating Committee with the sponsorship of the state's ACRL Chapter. Two surveys collected information directly from the libraries for serials cancelled from July 1989 through June 1992. More than 40 libraries responded; 45 percent responded to both requests for data. Analyzes results of the surveys, revealing cancellations in many disciplines and instances of libraries stopping the same title. The project was an outgrowth of increased attempts to explore the potential for cooperative collection development and resource sharing within Iowa. One benefit of this approach was increased communication among collection development librarians, selectors of materials, and managers of serials collections within the state. Outlines future goals.

Do we know What we are Paying For? A Comparison of Journal Subscription Costs

Do we know What we are Paying For? A Comparison of Journal Subscription Costs

Do we know what we are paying for? A comparison of journal subscription costs

Do we know what we are paying for? A comparison of journal subscription costs

Format Citation Patterns and Their Implications for Collection Development in Research Libraries

In this time of rapidly increasing journal subscription costs and shrinking (or stable) acquisition budgets, it is imperative to acquire materials as effectively as possible. One method of doing this is to use citation analysis of the scholarly literature as a guideline. Citation analysis is the analysis of the references from a set of documents (such as an analysis of all of the citations from five years of College & Research Libraries or of all citations from geology dissertations at a university). Information received from the analysis includes: languages of items cited, age of items cited (to calculate a half‐life for the field), and rate of self‐citations. Broadus reviewed citation analysis, its use, validity, and reliability. In the past, citation analysis has been used in collection development to decide on the suitability of specific items (both journals and monographs), such as mentioned in Buzzard and Whaley. The method introduced here is to use the percentage of publication formats cited in the research literature to serve as a guideline for acquisitions budget breakdowns, i.e., percentages allocated to monographs versus that allocated to other formats, for each discipline. The reasoning behind this is that an effective method of acquiring materials is to purchase the materials that the library's clients will use in the formats in which they will use them. The key assumption is that the citations in a scholar's paper reflect the literature the scholar used.

Guilt-free automated claiming

Note: A version of this article was originally presented as a paper on 22 May 1989 at the Annual Meeting of the Medical Library Association in Boston. Among the various constituents of the serials informat ion chain, there is little argument that claims are costly publishers, subscription agencies, and libraries, and that they contr ibute indirectly the rising cost of journal subscriptions. However, members of this uneasy, t h ree -way alliance at times disagree as the degree each party contributes the problem. Frank Clasquin, representing Faxon, delivered a paper on this topic at the Conference on Management Problems in Serials Work that was held at Florida Atlantic Univers i ty in 1973. Appropriately entit led Claim Enigma for Serials and Journals, it repor ted on a study to sort claims into identif iable categories, document the incidence of occurrence, examine the multiple sources or causes, review the means of resolving the problems, and suggest a of activity and responsibility which should be borne by the library, agency, and publisher. ''1 The key words here are balance of activity and The question that is proposed is whether the automation of serials control systems for claiming has in any way negatively affected this delicate of activity and responsibility. Are automated libraries producing an excessive number of claims, as some subscription agents, publishers, and librarians suggest? Because many of the routine procedures in claiming have been streamlined and consequently made more eff icient by automation, is it now or will it soon become a factor in disrupting the of activity and responsibility among the members of the claiming process? All evidence suggests that it already has become a factor, and it is fast becoming an issue, but more about this subject later.

On the costs of journal subscriptions

University librarians are raising an increasingly loud cry of anguish as a result of the soaring costs of scientific journals. Recently, this problem has been forcefully driven home by a spate of articles (Holden, 1987; Parmater, 1988; Ruschin, 1988; Turner, 1989) in a variety of sources suggesting that one of the primary consequences of this increasing cost must be cancellation of library subscriptions. As a long-time member of a geology departmental library committee and as an ex-editor of the Journal of Paleontology, I feel it is appropriate to comment on this problem and to offer some suggestions regarding approaches to ameliorate the problem.

Seven Years of Cancellations at Georgia Tech

The Georgia Institute of Technology Library has an extensive collection of serials, with emphasis on engineering, science, management, and architecture periodicals. Escalating costs of journal subscriptions combined with chronically inadequate resources budgets necessitated a careful evaluation of the serials collection in the mid 1970s. The F.W. Faxon Company's library information line was used to store evaluative data about each title, and printouts including these data were used to organize titles for evaluation preparatory to cancellation. The completed evaluation was used as the basis for the cancellation of 202 subscriptions in 1976 and 692 subscriptions in 1979. Subsequently, in 1981, an additional 545 subscriptions were cancelled. Ultimately the budget was brought under control at some cost to the quality and extent of the serials collection. In conclusion, the importance of constant collection evaluation is stressed, interlibrary cooperation is urged, and advance planning for large scale subscription cancellations is advised.

Publishers, Libraries, and Costs of Journal Subscriptions in Times of Funding Retrenchment

A study funded by the National Science Foundation and carried out at the Indiana University Graduate Library School examined the economic interaction between libraries and publishers of scholarly and research journals for the period 1969-73. Drawing from the findings of the study, the validity of the fears of librarians of growth in the number of journals published and publishers' profits and the fears of publishers of unlimited photocopying in libraries are examined. The complex price structure of journal subscriptions, their increasing cost, and the problems these pose both to publishers and librarians are discussed. How libraries allocate their budgets is also examined, and problems requiring further investigation are identified.

Toward a cost/utility model for social science periodicals

The fiscal pressures currently facing college and university campuses provide ample incentives for developing resource allocation models which maximize effectiveness. University libraries have not been exempt from the need to efficiently allocate stable or shrinking budget dollars. However, this objective is complicated by two factors: (a) the increasing number of scientific journals from which to choose; (b) skyrocketing production and distribution costs of printed material. This article discusses a citation-indexing model for business and related social science periodicals. The model considers journal subscription costs and value-in use to researchers.