Re: Study Identifies Factors that Could Lead to Journal Cancellations

["Anthony Watkinson" <anthony.watkinson@btopenworld.com>]

Heather Morrison may well be right but there is one point she 
makes and has made before which has to be challenged. ArChiv is 
populated by preprints and not by postprints on the whole.

Anthony

----- Original Message -----
From: "Heather Morrison" <heatherm@eln.bc.ca>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, November 14, 2006 1:28 PM
Subject: re: Study Identifies Factors that Could Lead to Journal
Cancellations


> Regarding the announcement at: http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/
> ListArchives/0611/msg00035.html
>
> This study is interesting, however as a librarian my comment is that
> the assumptions underlying the study illustrate a lack of
> understanding of the basic decision-making process of the academic
> librarian collections specialist.
>
> This study looks at 6 attributes and assesses librarian
> preferences, in an attempt to predict cancellations of
> subscriptions in favor of open access materials if articles are
> available in archives.
>
> Elements of the model examined:
> Version of Article
> Percentage of a Journal's Articles that are Available
> Reliability of Access
> How up-to-date is the content
> Quality of the content
> Cost
>
> The problem with this, is that the primary factors determining
> collections decisions are not taken into account:  research and
> educational priorities of the university, and faculty assessment
> of the importance of journals.  When we take these factors into
> account, we can see why it makes sense that librarians continue
> to subscribe to physics journals, even when prices are considered
> high and virtually all of the articles are available for free in
> arXiv.
>
> In other words, the answers this study have found really do not
> matter, because it did not ask the right questions.  Research
> into librarians' collections decisions might be best led by
> librarians.
>
> Anna Creech hit the nail on the head when she said:  Publishers
> could stop trying to squeeze blood from a stone * that might
> impact cancellations, too.
>
> For decades, libraries have been forced to cancel subscriptions
> due to prices rising far above inflation.  No study of
> librarians' preferences and journal cancellations which not does
> consider this major factor can be considered even remotely
> objective.
>
> Heather Morrison
> http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com