Re: Institutional Journal Costs in an Open Access Environment

[Janellyn P Kleiner <jkleiner@lsu.edu>]

Since I have been in the library profession for 40 years, I know 
that authors paying for article publication is not new, 
particularly in the sciences. Those fees were either covered by 
grants or by academic departments decades ago and still are at 
some institutions.  I am a proponent of that same system today. I 
know exactly, down to the dollar, what comes to the library as 
indirect costs from overhead. I know what our percentage of that 
50%+ is and that it often differs from campus to campus. I'd 
venture to say that some libraries never see a penny of that 
money.

It's good to be familiar with how that operation works because 
you can then lobby for a bigger percentage if you can gain the 
support of a body of researchers. We've had some success in that 
area.  I am very familiar with grants procedures having written 
several that brought in more than $10 million - either as the PI, 
co-PI, and/or member of a team. Our team operated a few years to 
build and fund our statewide library network until we obtained 
legislative funding and could stop relying on soft money for 
network support.

Indirect cost funds at our university are targeted to support 
journal price increases and new subscriptions. I have 
incorporated grant awards into one of the spreadsheets I use to 
allocate funds for materials. My philosophy is that indirect cost 
funds come to academic libraries to support research materials 
that will enable faculty to obtain more grants. They are not to 
support faculty publications needed for promotion & tenure. That 
is the responsibility of academic departments and that is where 
that responsibility should remain -- certainly not from faculty 
personal funds. I am realistic enough, however, to know that in 
certain less productive departments research and 
publication-wise, personal funds may be all that's available but 
those departments are unlikely to contribute much in the way of 
indirect cost monies. Personally, library funds are stretched too 
far now to further endanger them by taking on page fee charges -- 
but that's just my opinion.

Jane Kleiner
Associate Dean of Libraries for Collection Services
The LSU Libraries
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, LA 70803
Phone: 225-578-2217
Fax: 225-578-6825
E-Mail: jkleiner@lsu.edu