re: Study Identifies Factors that Could Lead to Journal Cancellations

[Heather Morrison <heatherm@eln.bc.ca>]

Regarding the announcement at: http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/
ListArchives/0611/msg00035.html

This study is interesting, however as a librarian my comment is that
the assumptions underlying the study illustrate a lack of
understanding of the basic decision-making process of the academic
librarian collections specialist.

This study looks at 6 attributes and assesses librarian 
preferences, in an attempt to predict cancellations of 
subscriptions in favor of open access materials if articles are 
available in archives.

Elements of the model examined:
Version of Article
Percentage of a Journal's Articles that are Available
Reliability of Access
How up-to-date is the content
Quality of the content
Cost

The problem with this, is that the primary factors determining 
collections decisions are not taken into account:  research and 
educational priorities of the university, and faculty assessment 
of the importance of journals.  When we take these factors into 
account, we can see why it makes sense that librarians continue 
to subscribe to physics journals, even when prices are considered 
high and virtually all of the articles are available for free in 
arXiv.

In other words, the answers this study have found really do not 
matter, because it did not ask the right questions.  Research 
into librarians' collections decisions might be best led by 
librarians.

Anna Creech hit the nail on the head when she said:  Publishers 
could stop trying to squeeze blood from a stone * that might 
impact cancellations, too.

For decades, libraries have been forced to cancel subscriptions 
due to prices rising far above inflation.  No study of 
librarians' preferences and journal cancellations which not does 
consider this major factor can be considered even remotely 
objective.

Heather Morrison
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com