This study looks closely at academic and research library plans for their scholarly journal subscriptions. These subscriptions are the heart of a research library’s scholarly services and often constitute the majority of materials spending, making them particularly vulnerable in an economic downturn. This study helps its readers to answer questions such as: how many journal subscriptions have libraries cancelled this year? How many do they plan to cancel next year? Do they plan to add any subscriptions? How much do they plan to spend overall on journals subscriptions and what is the likely trend? What are their criterial for subscription cancellation and which academic fields will be the hardest hit? What process or procedures do they follow when cancelling subscriptions? Are faculty consulted? How many proposed cancellations are prevented by faculty objections? What percentage are saved due to agreements from faculty to partially or wholly support their cost? What means do libraries use to satisfy requests for lost content when they cancel subscriptions? How successful are these means in meeting library patron needs?
Just a few of the many findings of this 73-page report are:
Doctoral and MA/Level institutions in the sample plan to cancel a mean of 31.78 titles in the next year.
47.06% of libraries sample use a quantitative measure related to overall cost or cost per use to identify candidates for subscription cancellation.
The smaller the library, the greater the percentage of libraries that give faculty a chance to object to journals cancellations.
For research universities, the range of the percentage of times librarians are able to satisfy requests for content from recently cancelled journals is extraordinary with one participant able to satisfy library patron needs only 7.5% of the time, another, 90% of the time.