Open Access outside the U.S/U.K.

[Ann Okerson <ann.okerson@yale.edu>]

Heather, I was responsible for serials & gov docs & microforms at Simon
Fraser University Library from sometime in the 70s to 1985.  There were
several years of cutbacks (after those SFU startup years in the 60s in
which staff and collections all grew rapidly).  We took those cutbacks in
various ways:  not just serials cancellations, but reduction of
discretionary purchases, narrowing of approval plans, staff reductions,
and in one of my years -- salary rollbacks.

Our criteria for subscription cancellation didn't target the international
titles -- the category was not particularly relevant, for, you see, at
that time only a small minority of our titles were Canadian, maybe 20-25%
at most, maybe less, *so by definition the rest were international.* As I
recall, the US accounted for as much as 40-50% of our journal collections
and the rest were from outside Canada/US.  These are very imprecise
recollections, but my guess is that something of the sort is still true
for smaller countries like Canada.  By proportion there'd inevitably be
more "international" cancellations than domestic ones.

The critera in those days for cutting were much like today's in most
places:  what titles do your students and faculty really need (i.e., some
surrogate for use, which we'd do by counting re-shelved items, or putting
wrappers around issues to see if they were broken in order to open the
item -- things like that).  The science librarians of the time were
experts in bibliometrics so Science Citation Index data were particularly
closely studied. Faculty were asked for their opinions.  Price was noted
(though price per title was much less of an issue in those days).  It was
some combination of the above factors, more or less in the order listed
above, that led us to decide to keep or cancel a journal.  Were any of
them "international" journals?  Sure -- but, again, note that at SFU our
80% of non-Canadian periodicals imprints would by definition meet the
international criterion.

Even in the US most of the subscriptions are "international" from all
around the world, so the answers from all respondents could easily be,
"yes, we cancelled a number of international titles, because they
represented the majority of our cancellations!"  This is inevitably the
case for the larger research libraries, who draw information from a large
global environment.

These answers don't particularly shed light on open access, which is
national boundary independent.  Ann Okerson

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri,  3 Sep 2004 21:16:41 EDT
From: Heather Morrison <heatherm@eln.bc.ca>
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Open Access outside the U.S/U.K.

apologies for cross-posting similar questions to different lists...

This November, I'll be presenting at the Charleston conference on the
topic Open Access outside the U.S. / U.K., and would appreciate any
information or insights that liblicense participants might have.

One specific question I have that readers of liblicense might have some
knowledge about:  I suspect, based on my own experiences in academic
libraries, that international journals were among the first victims of
cuts in subscription budgets, going back to the early 70's at least.  If
this is the case, and open access publishing is feasible for these
publishers, will the result be both increased research impact for these
authors, and a return to fuller access to the international literature for
us North American / European types?

Does anyone have any experience with these early cuts, or citations to
research on this topic?

many thanks,

Heather G. Morrison
BC Electronic Library Network
Email:  heatherm@eln.bc.ca