{"id":262,"date":"2009-08-25T15:55:03","date_gmt":"2009-08-25T15:55:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/2009\/08\/25\/time_for_a_subscription_review\/"},"modified":"2011-03-02T20:53:33","modified_gmt":"2011-03-02T20:53:33","slug":"time_for_a_subscription_review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/2009\/08\/25\/time_for_a_subscription_review\/","title":{"rendered":"Time for a subscription review"},"content":{"rendered":"

As summer draws to a close and the new autumn season looms, it’s that time when librarians start to think about subscriptions for the next calendar year. (Actually we now think about them all year round – I just had a licence from one publisher to sign for our 2009 subscriptions and we started thinking about another publisher’s 2010 subscriptions back in April).
\nIn a good year we can just renew everything without any worries, perhaps trimming or adding at the edges. In a bad year we have to try to make more major changes and often that means some kind of major review.
\nThis year for the first time I have tried using usage statistics as the principal means of identifying titles to go on the hit list. This is not perfect – minority subjects may get unfairly targeted and groups where there has been some staffing hiatus will also show low usage. So I also ask all PIs for comments on the proposed list. Here is the message (slightly amended) that I have just sent out. It’ll be interesting to see what response I get.
\n\"\"
\nJournal subscriptions account for about 90% of this library’s consumables budget. In the last few years the annual price increases have been less steep (about 7% p.a.) than previously but the recent weakness of the the Pound is going to cause problems for 2010 as many publishers quote their prices in US dollars or in Euros.
\nWe are proposing to make changes to our subscriptions for 2010, saving about \u00a315k in total and helping us to continue to pay for the remaining journal subscriptions and packages.
\nLow usage<\/strong>
\nWe have been looking at usage figures for all our subscribed titles and comparing them with the cost of the journals, and have arrived at a list of journals that appear to be providing poor value for money. Twelve titles are suggested for cancellation.
\nReducing print<\/strong>
\nWe have already reduced the number of print journal subscriptions substantially in favour of online-only access, and we will go further down that route in 2010. We will keep print subscriptions only for the weeklies with news content and for general titles. Some titles that do not allow an online-only subscription may also have to be retained in print for now. We plan to keep just ten print titles.
\nNote that due to the way that UK VAT works, switching from print to online only does not usually save money
\nWhat is a subscription?<\/strong>
\nJournal business models have changed hugely over the last 15 years. Many of the online journals that are listed in our catalogue and e-journals list are free, partly free or come as part of a package deal where we pay a single price for a large collection of titles from one publisher. These package deals give us access to a large range of titles including some of high interest, some of low interest and some of no interest at all. Overall they are good value but they do make it harder to say what the cost of an individual title is. Publishers offering package deals also insist on no-cancellation clauses, so reducing our options to cancel titles.
\nOpen access<\/strong>
\nOpen Access is slowly having an effect on access to journals. Full open access titles such as PLoS Biology require no subscription. Titles with open backfiles (usually after 12 months) are useful but we still need subscriptions for current material. The growing number of articles archived in PubMedCentral and elsewhere are also useful but many of these are delayed by 6 or 12 months, so we still need subscriptions to key titles. At present Open Access gives fringe benefits but is not a complete replacement for subscription-based access.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As summer draws to a close and the new autumn season looms, it’s that time when librarians start to think about subscriptions for the next calendar year. (Actually we now think about them all year round – I just had … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-collections","category-journal-publishing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}