RE: Institutional Journal Costs in an Open Access Environment

["David Goodman" <David.Goodman@liu.edu>]

If the Springer or the Elsevier [etc.] journals are paid for by 
author fees, the library will not need to subscribe to them. If 
the library will not need to subscribe to them, it will not need 
the money it has been using for it.

There are now two choices for the library: a/ use the money for 
subsidizing the faculty's publishing in such journals b/ let the 
Dean use the money to subsidize the faculty's publishing in such 
journals.

Who is naive enough to think that a library could keep the money?

The best the library will be able to do, is to let the Dean use 
half the money for subsidizing faculty publication, and let the 
library use the other half for improving library resources 
generally. I would strongly advise proposing this very soon--if 
the administration proposes it before the library does, the 
probable result will be for the library to give up 90% of the 
money for subsidizing faculty publications, and be generously 
permitted to keep 5 or 10% for library purchases.

I think the library can expect the cooperation of the humanities 
faculty, who are desperately in need of some source of money for 
publishing subsidies, and would be delighted if there were also 
some money to use on materials for them. You probably could count 
on many of the science faculty too. All they need is the 
journals, and if the publishers supply them without a 
subscription, they have no further use for the money except to 
subsidize their own articles.

(As Phil Davis posted in short dramatic form, the worst strategy 
is to distribute the money yourself, and let the faculty all 
resent the library's decisions. Let any conflict take place in 
the administrative offices--the Dean is used to it.)

The problem is to accomplish the two ends at the same time--to 
let the journals rely on articles fees so the libraries can 
cancel the subscriptions, and for the libraries to cancel the 
subscriptions to supply the money for fees.  This takes 
cooperation on all sides.

After we stop laughing, consider the alternative:  the libraries 
can watch the journal costs escalate until no library can buy 
them, and the following year the journals will mostly cease 
publication. The library, the administration, the faculty, and 
the publishers will all have passively cooperated-- in letting 
the scholarly publication system fall apart.

Fortunately, the scientists will rig up some sort of crude IR by 
themselves. The library, no longer needed, will become faculty 
offices, and the librarians as they retire will not be replaced. 
The process is already beginning in the sciences.

Dr. David Goodman
Associate Professor
Palmer School of Library and Information Science
Long Island University
and, formerly, Princeton University Library
dgoodman@princeton.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu on behalf of Janellyn P Kleiner
Sent: Mon 5/1/2006 11:32 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: Institutional Journal Costs in an Open Access Environment

Are you suggesting that libraries should pay author publishing 
fees? Promotion and tenure, usually based on publishing records, 
are the province of academic departments not libraries. The role 
of libraries is to house publications and provide access to them, 
not to support faculty publishing charges. That is the 
responsibility of academic departments where the decisions on 
supporting publication can best be made by those who conduct the 
research and publish the results. They have the knowledge and 
experience to make decisions about what is worthy of publication 
and merits financial support if grant support is not available. 
Libraries do not. I am an advocate of OA, but the support for 
faculty publishing should come directly from Universities to 
academic departmental budgets not library budgets. Libraries do 
not and should not have any role in the promotion and tenure 
process other than for their library faculty.

For libraries, such as ours, that periodically survey faculty to 
determine their needs and also retain browse and use data as well 
as interlibrary loan data, they have the data that tells them 
what is essential and what is not. We have more than a decade of 
this data. Our decisions on what to buy and the databases and 
titles to which we subscribe are based on that data and are very 
cost effective.  Document delivery, subsidized by our library, 
supports researchers who have more specialized needs. In today's 
environment, it is essential to know how to use funds to support 
research and instruction effectively. Today's technology makes it 
easy to obtain and store data useful to decision-making. We can 
justify our expenditures and this has brought us support from 
campus faculty and our university administration.

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