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home Budget, J. Otto Lottes Health Sciences Library No major journal cut for 2018, despite continued increasing journal subscription prices

No major journal cut for 2018, despite continued increasing journal subscription prices

By Taira Meadowcroft   Posted in Budget J. Otto Lottes Health Sciences Library
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Primarily due to journal price increases, the University Libraries were once again facing a $1.3 million shortfall in the 2018 collections budget.

Thanks to our University Administration, we will be able to avoid a major cut to our journal subscriptions this year.

With annual price increases far exceeding inflation, increasing funds are needed each year just to maintain our existing subscriptions.

Scholarly publishing is big business. Some of these companies are as large as Delta Airlines, and more profitable than Apple. Publisher profits in excess of 30% a year are not uncommon.

Read more about how some researchers are making strides to create a fair and sustainable way to publish their work, and how several of our own University of Missouri faculty are publishing in open access journals, allowing their research to be accessed freely.

 

 

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Taira Meadowcroft

Taira Meadowcroft is the Public Health and Community Engagement Librarian at the Health Sciences Library at the University of Missouri.

home Budget, J. Otto Lottes Health Sciences Library, Resources and Services Some Taylor & Francis journal prices increasing as much as 25% in 2017

Some Taylor & Francis journal prices increasing as much as 25% in 2017

By E. Diane Johnson   Posted in Budget J. Otto Lottes Health Sciences Library Resources and Services
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Pricing for 2017 subscriptions is starting to come in, and once again, their prices are increasing. These journals are among a list of 21 subscriptions that will cost the University Libraries $6000 more in 2017 than a year ago. That’s an increase between 15-25%. 

Meanwhile, US inflation for 2017 is projected to be about 2%; nowhere near the average increase of journal subscriptions featured in the list. 

Many disciplines are impacted by these subscription price increases, not just the health sciences:

journals_increaseing_over_15_in_2017_revised2

home Budget, J. Otto Lottes Health Sciences Library, Resources and Services Seeking input on journal subscription renewals

Seeking input on journal subscription renewals

By E. Diane Johnson   Posted in Budget J. Otto Lottes Health Sciences Library Resources and Services
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With the prospect of a possible shortfall of $1 million to the MU Libraries collection budget in FY2017, we are seeking input on some lower-use journals, particularly the titles in the bundles purchased through publishers Elsevier and Wiley.

Follow this link to provide your input on specific journal titles between now and April 4. 

We are beginning with these bundles because:

  •  they consume a large portion of the library collections budget, amounting to about $2,000,000 annually
  •  similar to a “cable tv model”, these bundles contain many titles which were never selected for our library, (e.g. dentistry)

Also included are some high cost/low use journals from other publishers in a variety of disciplines.

Learn more about the campuswide collections review process and the reasons for it.

With subscription prices escalating annually at a rate that far exceeds inflation, MU is not the only university facing this dilemma.  Read more:

Larivière, V., Haustein, S., and Mongeon, P. (2015) The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era. PLoS One.  10(6): e0127502.

Bergstrom, T. C, Courant, P. N, McAfee, R. P., Williams, M. A. (2014) Evaluating Big Deal Journal Bundles. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 111(26): 9425–9430

View Health Sciences Library Director Deb Ward’s message to department chairs and health sciences leaders.

Contact us if you have any additional questions.