Factors involved, Re: RE: puzzled by self-archiving thread :

[David Goodman <dgoodman@Princeton.EDU>]

OK, involvement, what else do your present to them? I've 
collected for a similar audience.

The other factors I took into account besides price and cost, 
are:

1.Citations. Not raw citations, but citation from the 
university's faculty, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, 
and, in my university upper division undergraduates. Citations in 
theses too, both graduate and undergraduate. Used with care, 
because a journal may very intensively for an undergraduate 
thesis, and then never again.

2. Purchase requests, especially from the faculty, but from any 
regular users. Used with care, because purchase is not always the 
best way.

3. Document Delivery requests. This needs care: same reason as 
#1--people may use one journal very intensively for a thesis or 
paper, and then never again.

4. Expected price increases, judged by the practice of the 
publisher. (looking at both dollars and percentage).

4A. "Big deals;"  even with interchangeability of titles, a large 
library may already subscribe to everything of conceivable 
interst from some publishers.

5. Permanence of access-- A. In the short run, this applies to 
material available only on the basis of a big deal, or through an 
aggregator. B. Archival responsibilities. (That is, true archival 
responsibilities--a library without a comprehensive collection in 
a subject is not ready to assume them, and normally as a first 
priority should expand the collection.)

6. Alternative routes: A. Availability of electronic copy for 
immediate purchase B. Expected rapid availability from document 
delivery C. Various consortial arrangements. D. Open Access: Here 
is where open access comes in, or to be exact will come in, 
because the concentration of such availability in other than OA 
journals is not yet sufficient to make the difference, especially 
considering finadability. But this should increase rapidly in 
biomedicine, with the growth of PMC and the linking to OA copies 
in PubMed. (And, as we all know, there are other excellent ways 
to get Open Access copies; details are for another day.)

And there are of course subsidiary factors, such as the variable 
likelihood of budget changes and the expected development of 
academic programs. (These, and the other factors can of course 
also be explained in detail)

But all the above are only modifying factors; while I have used 
them on occasion, almost always the question came down to the 
money and the use.

>From the reputation of your library, and Rick's, I am certain you 
take account of all this. Even though most of the librarians on 
ths list do not need reminding either, librarians in general have 
not done enough public explanation, so users--even publishers and 
information scientists--may not be aware of all the 
possibilities.

David Goodman, Ph.D., M.L.S.
dgoodman@princeton.edu

----- Original Message -----
From: Leah Krevit <leah.krevit@exch.library.tmc.edu>
Date: Wednesday, December 27, 2006 6:22 pm
Subject: RE: puzzled by self-archiving thread
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu

>>Eventually, we have to pick subscriptions to cancel.  If we
>>don't make our cancellation decisions based on usage and cost,
>>what criteria should we use?  I don't ask that question
>>facetiously -- I'd be honestly interested to know, from a
>>publisher's perspective, what other criteria _would_ make sense.
>
> Rick, we are never happy with simple algorithms around here. 
> No, the STM journal world is a complicated place. We not only 
> consider use and cost, but impact factors as well. When looking 
> at 8,000 in-scope journals which are critical to the research, 
> education, and clinical care activities in the biomedical 
> environment this library serves, finding titles to cut becomes 
> a dangerous activity. So, we gather as much ammunition as we 
> can before making those cancellation lists public. Having open 
> access journals of high quality now helps ease the pain a bit, 
> but each year is more of a nightmare--cut journals? Stop buying 
> books? Pray the journal price increase will not exceed 5%? What 
> about databases?
>
> Impact factors may not have the "impact" they once did, but 
> they are still useful pieces of the overall data picture I have 
> to present to faculty and biomedical researchers, who 
> understand them.
>
> Happy New Year to all on this wonderful list!!
>
> Leah Krevit, M.L.I.S.
> Associate Director
> Collections Management
> Houston Academy of Medicine -
> Texas Medical Center Library
> Houston TX 77030-2809
> leah.krevit@exch.library.tmc.edu
> http://resource.library.tmc.edu