RE: Fascinating quotation

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

Both parts of the fundamental cost/use balance should be considered. There
are several reasons for a library to cancel subscriptions, but the usual
one is because of cost increases greater than budget increases. This is
something publishers can deliberately affect, should they want to. If they
are willing to decrease their profits to eliminate price increases
altogether, I predict they will see almost no cancellations.

The availability from outside sources is a factor, though a subsidiary
one. The phase in of required OA will affect almost none of the articles
to be published in 2005, and even in biomedicine merely 5% in 2006 (new
grants only=25%)(%NIH=1/3 biomedical in US), (%US biomed in world less
than half,)  The amount of OA from authors' choices is not possible to
accurately estimate, but considering the slow rate of increasing
awareness, I doubt it could possibly affect more than 20% of the
biomedicine articles in 2006. Regardless of the merits of canceling
subscriptions when 90% or even 50% of the articles are available others,
25% will not matter.

But, as Joe says, what libraries think will happen in the future does
matter. It does not appear to me than many do look ahead, and the evidence
is the very high percentage of renewals for SD and similar plans in 2004
and 2005, and for long terms--up to 7 years I believe. No library willing
to dedicate to a single exceptionally expensive publisher such a large
percentage of their budget for so many years can possibly be looking
beyond immediate advantage.

Dr. David Goodman
Associate Professor, 
Palmer School of Library and Information Science
Long Island University, Brookville, NY 
dgoodman@liu.edu