OhioLINK cuts back Big Deals

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

I forward an excerpt from an announcement  from OhioLINK,
http://www.ohiolink.edu/supportohiolink/didyouknow.html

"Beginning in 2005, we are reducing the number of active titles we 
receive from Blackwell Publishing and Springer (formerly Springer-Verlag 
and Kluwer Publishing). In the case of Blackwell this constitutes 144 of 
573 active titles. For Springer this constitutes 346 of 1056 active 
titles. These are the least used titles of these two publishers across 
the OhioLINK community and reflect all academic disciplines. Titles that 
we will no longer receive represent 4% of the annual downloads from 
journal issues already purchased and loaded into the EJC through 2004.

*	In 2006, we will likely reduce the number of titles we receive from 
Elsevier Science, Wiley, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University 
negotiation with each publisher.

* Other OhioLINK resources and services you currently use may not be
available later this year and next year. Even under the best case
scenarios, there simply will not be enough funds available to cover the
wide array of 100+ databases, 10,000+ electronic journals, 19,000+
e-books, 1,000+ digital videos, etc. that are currently available to
600,000 users statewide."

Comment on this has already appeared on Chemlist-L by Bob Michaelson, and
I repost the last paragraph of my own comment:

"Much as I support OA, OA alone will not even help to sustain this system.
There are really only 3 alternatives:

o Either additional funding must be procured

o Or costs must be lowered

o Or a cheaper system be instituted. 

It is the hope of OA advocates such as myself that the interest aroused
will provide additional funding, such as the high amounts apparently
necessary to support large OA Journals. If this is not successful, the
only publishers able to continue operating will be those that can reduce
their costs: either their production costs--or their overheads--or their
profits.

Judging the probabilities, I suggest we start planning for a replacement 
system. ...we do not have four decades grace--I have elsewhere suggested 
it will be just about four years: 

http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/archive/00000685/ 
DG