HOW DO THE LIBRARIES GO ABOUT CANCELING JOURNALS

Method No. 1  Cancel agreed upon percentage across the board

Pros:

• Might appear fair (same percentage applies to all disciplines)
• Less impact on book-centered disciplines
• Easy to compute amounts to be cut

Cons:

• Greater impact on journal-centered disciplines
• Greater impact on departments with small number of specialized journals
• Hurts disciplines with inexpensive journals (canceling $25-$50 journals will not significantly affect the total dollar amount needed)
• Interdisciplinary titles can be lost

Long-term effects:

• Preserves historic distribution of funds (which may not be optimal)

Method No. 2  Cancellation based on contribution to budgetary inflation

Pros:

• Targets high-inflating journals
• Less impact on book-centered disciplines
• Less impact on mature fields not creating new journals

Cons:

• Greater impact on journal-centered disciplines
• Interdisciplinary journals are vulnerable

Long-term effects:

• Changes the current distribution of funds, shifting our budgetary balance away from journal-dependent, growing disciplines

Method No. 3  Cancel high-cost inflating, and low use subscriptions

Pros:

• Attacks high-cost and high-inflating journals
• Is not discipline or department specific
• Performed by a small, representative group able to see the “big picture”
• Saves most money by cutting fewest journals

Cons:

• After years of doing this, there are few of these subscriptions left
• Small departments do not generate high usage statistics
• Could be perceived as biased, subjective, and targeting smaller departments

Long-term effect:

• Causes the Libraries less overall damage than the other two methods

Collection Development Committee, MU Libraries, November 30, 2007