Author: Thomas Bremer

Journal proliferation and relentless inflation have created a nationwide "serials crisis" for academic libraries.  During the past decade, journal inflation rates have ranged from 10 to more than 20 percent per year.  Because of unfavorable exchange rates, periodicals published overseas have inflated at even higher rates.  Factors publishers often cite for increasing subscription costs are: additional pages published, increased paper and postage costs, inflation, value of the dollar for foreign titles, and the need for publishers to make up revenue lost from a large number of cancellations.  Contrary to conventional wisdom, academic library budgets nationally have increased less rapidly than other university expenditures.  United States Department of Education figures show that budgets of libraries have declined through the 1980s to the point they have lost almost all the ground gained in the preceding 20 years.

NDSU Libraries has not been immune to these inflationary pressures.   Although for several years the Libraries' budget kept pace with inflation, static materials' budgets during the past years have forced the problem to a critical stage.  To keep serials expenses within its allotted budget, the Libraries initiated three major serials cancellation projects.

Current Inflation Projections

Options for dealing with serials inflation

Resources 

• To combat the high cost of journals, several universities are developing their own depositories to store faculty research.  These depositories are available on the Internet and freely accessible.  Some universities are also banning together to provide joint depositories of research.  Here are some sites that are beginning to provide research:
  • DSpace - MIT digital repository created to capture, distribute and preserve the intellectual output of MIT. (free)   http://www.dspace.org/
  • DSpace - Cambridge UK   http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/dspace/index.htm
  • eScholarship - University of California Depository   http://escholarship.cdlib.org/

Further Readings 

• ACRL Scholarly Coommunication Committee: Principles and strategies for the reform of scholarly communication.   C&RL News September 2003; 64(8): 526-527, 547.
  Issues related to the formal system of scholarly communication.
• Christiane Asschenfeldt (Creative Commons): Copyright and Licensing issues - The International Commons [Video Presentations from the CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication.]
• Scholarly electronic publishing bibliography / by Charles W. Bailey, Jr. 
  This selective bibliography presents over 1,000 articles, books, electronic documents, and other sources that are useful in understanding scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet and other networks.
• Stefan Bengtson: Lets reclaim our scholarly property [editorial] Palaeontologia electronica  2000; 3(1).
• Raym Crow (SPARC Consulting Group): Half Full: the improving state of scholarly publishing [Video Presentations from the CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication.]
• Julie Claire Diop: Librarians target science publishers: they decry rising prices of academic journals Newsday.com  April 18, 2003.
• Elsevier: Responses to questions posed by The Science and Technology Committee [submitted to the UK House of Commons Select Committee for Science and Technology]  February 12, 2004.
• The implications of information technology for scientific journal publishing: a literature review (NSF 03-323) / Amy Friedlander and Rдndi S. Bessette. -- National Science Foundation, Division of Science Resources Statistics : Arlington VA, 2003.
• Bill Hubbard (SHERPA, University of Nottingham): SHERPA Institutional Repositories and Practical Advocacy [Video Presentations from the CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication.]
• Guidelines for cataloging VIVA electronic collections.
• House Bill Seeks Public Domain for Federally Funded Research. American libraries online  July 3, 2003.
• Lotte Jшrgensen (Lund University): How to disseminate Open Access Journals through OAI, the DOAJ project [Video Presentations from the CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication.]
• Michael Krot and David Yakimischak (JSTOR): Building the JSTOR OAI-PMH Service: A Technical Case Study in Best Practices [Video Presentations from the CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication.]
• Peter Lawrence: The politics of publication. Nature March 20, 2003; 422(6929): 259-261.
• White paper on e-journal usage statistics / Judy Luther. -- Washington, D.C. : Council on Library and Information Resources, 2000.
  This report examines why it has been difficult to obtain statistics on electronic journal usage, and reveals librarians' and publishers' concerns with respect to the generation of usage statistics.
• New challenges for scholarly communication in the digital era.
• Andrew Odlyzko: Papers on electronic publishing and electronic commerce.
• Pew Higher Education Roundtable: To publish and perish in their "Policy Perspectives" series (Philadelphia, PA: Institute for Research on Higher Education, 1998.)
• The SPARC Open Access Newsletter
• Use and users of electronic library resources: an overview and analysis of recent research studies / by Carol Tenopir. -- Washington, DC : Council on Library and Information Resources, 2003.
• Brendan J. Wyly: Competition in scholarly publishing? What publisher profits reveal.  ARL: a bimonthly newsleter of research library issues and actions  1998 Oct; (200).