From the Library Director:
The Impact of Scholarly Publishing Changes

As many of you are aware, the UAMS Library is currently in the middle of a transition from the purchase of print information resources to the purchase or “leasing of access” to online information resources. The Library currently subscribes to approximately 2,000 online journals and 85 online books. Despite the fact that access to online resources is provided in various ways by different publishers/vendors, and may sometimes be confusing to the users the first time they access a particular resource, online seems to be the overwhelming choice of the Library’s users. Online access not only allows us to provide more convenient access to information for UAMS personnel on campus and at home, but also allows us to provide convenient access to resources for the Arkansas Children’s Hospital library, the AHEC libraries, and for distance education students.

We decided about four years ago to begin purchasing or leasing online access to information resources, and we usually kept the print subscriptions as well. Three reasons we kept many print subscriptions are as follows:

• publishers often would not let us drop the print subscriptions if we wanted online access (we had to pay for both or none – this is called bundled pricing);
• if we cancel an “online only” subscription later, we often will have no access to the years of journals we’ve paid for in online form only; and,
• we have no guarantees that the publishers will archive the electronic forms of the current journals for access many years from now (in other words, there won’t be libraries all over the country with print copies which can be borrowed on interlibrary loan).

However, because of budget cuts, we decided two years ago that we could not afford to purchase both print and online access, and that whenever allowed by the publisher, we would purchase online access only and cancel print subscriptions.

Besides the bundled pricing, lack of ownership to backfiles, and archival issues mentioned above, the purchasing or leasing of online resources has some other disadvantages for the Library and its budget. Publishers or vendors of online information resources often will sell access to their online journals only in “big deals”, meaning we subscribe to the entire package of online journals offered by a publisher or none, or if we are allowed to selectively choose individual titles from a publisher’s list, we pay much more per title than we would pay in the “big deal”. A good example of this is what happened this year with our online access to Academic Press journals. Academic Press was purchased by Reed Elsevier, which incorporated the Academic Press titles into its Science Direct package of journals. We cannot afford to purchase the entire Science Direct package, so we have selected a list of 20 Academic Press journals to purchase individually from Reed Elsevier. We will pay the same price for those 20 journals for 2003 as we paid for the whole Academic Press package of 167 journals for 2002, and will lose access to the other 147 Academic Press titles.

Unfortunately, much of the scientific publishing industry is increasingly being controlled by publishing conglomerates. The UAMS Library currently spends about 2/3 of its nearly one million dollar journal budget on products controlled by just two European conglomerates – Reed Elsevier and Wolters Kluwer. Reed Elsevier owns about 1,500 journals, including those published by Elsevier, Harcourt, Saunders, and Mosby, and owns the MD Consult clinical information product. In 2003, the Library will spend about $338,000 for approximately 227 Reed Elsevier journals. Wolters Kluwer owns several journal publishers including Kluwer and Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins (LWW), and owns the Ovid company, through which we purchase 12 Ovid databases, 153 online journals, 12 online books, Clineguide (clinical pathways, drug database, etc.) and MedWeaver (differential diagnosis software package). Price increases for these products and for many journals purchased by the Library have been much higher than the consumer price index for the past several years.

The Library will continue to work with the campus administration to maximize the Library’s resources and, hopefully, avoid drastic cuts in the Library’s journal subscriptions.

Several initiatives have been established in recent years to address the escalating cost of scholarly publishing, and to try to change the publishing process to a more efficient one which makes information more quickly and widely available. BioMed Central (http://www.biomedcentral.com/info) and PubMed Central (http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/about/intro.html) are two such initiatives. However, it will probably be several years before these initiatives are successful enough to make a significant impact on the Library’s budget.

Due to budget cuts two of the past three years, the Library’s current budget is at the same level that it was four years ago. Ten (21%) of the Library personnel positions have been cut, the book budget has been cut from $100,000 to $50,000, and the maintenance budget has been cut several times. One-time money has been used to help pay for journal subscriptions to prevent major cuts in the subscription list, the Library has participated in group purchasing with other libraries to get better pricing for online resources whenever possible, and, as mentioned earlier, has eliminated much of the duplication between print and online journal subscriptions. The Library will continue to work with the campus administration to maximize the Library’s resources and, hopefully, to avoid drastic cuts in the Library’s journal subscriptions.

Mary L. Ryan
UAMS Library Director