Survey of Academic & Medical Library Plans for the Health Sciences Journals Collection (ISBN No:978-1-57440-661-0 )

This study looks closely at the plans of 16 academic and medical libraries for their collection of health sciences journals, examining issues such as:  how many cancellations and new titles are planned for their near future?  What areas are most likely to be targeted for cuts or additions?  How much has and will overall spending rise or fall?  What has been the impact of the pandemic on health sciences journals collections?  If libraries cancel titles how do they fulfill requests from faculty members for content? What is the role of interlibrary loan? Academic social media sites? Institutional repositories? Requests for copies directly from authors? How are candidates for title elimination identified?  How often are academic departments affected by the cuts able to contribute to library budgets and prevent the cuts?

Just a few of the71-page report’s many findings are that:

• Medical schools in the sample planned large increases in their journals budgets for 2021-22
• 43.7% of respondents gave faculty or other end users the opportunity to object prior to cancelling journal titles.
• Use of quantitative measures of cost and usage as benchmarks for title elimination are much more common in the libraries from the USA than elsewhere
• Spending on health sciences journals by the libraries in the sample fell 0.7% in 2020-221