RE: puzzled by self-archiving thread

["Rick Anderson" <rickand@unr.edu>]

Hi, Margaret --

> As we cancel journals, we rely on reports which show the number 
> of uses, the costs, and the costs per use.  We have no reports 
> which show the journal's stance on IRs or whether it is OA 
> after an embargo.

Suppose you're considering a journal for renewal, and you learn 
that all of its content is immediately and freely available via 
one or more standard IRs.  Would you be likely to keep the 
subscription or cancel it?  (For the sake of argument, let's say 
it's a cheap STM journal -- $1,000/year.)

How, in the absence of standard reports, might you learn that 
it's fully self-archived?  Well, you might have a student check 
it against the SHERPA/RoMEO list here:

http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php?colour=green

... and then use Google Scholar to do a quick spot-check of 
recent issues and see whether the papers are appearing promptly 
in IRs.

Does this sound labor-intensive?  Maybe, but let's say the 
process takes up 15 minutes of a student employee's time.  If 
that process allows you to cancel a $1,000/year journal, then I'd 
say you've invested your staff time fairly wisely.  Let's say 
your student checks 20 such journals before finding one that can 
be canceled.  You're still way ahead.

Of course, just because a journal is fully self-archived doesn't 
_necessarily_ mean that it can be cancelled.  But as the price 
gets higher, the pressure to cancel gets greater.

----
Rick Anderson
Dir. of Resource Acquisition
University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
rickand@unr.edu