General statement about inflation in the costs for subscriptions to journals: Background and some solutions for the escalating cost of OUS journals

Prepared by members of the OUS Library Council, June 18, 2004

Background
The problem has to do with current model of scholarly publishing and the market power of commercial publishers. Data collected by the Associated Research Libraries (ARL) shows that the cost paid for serials by research libraries increased 227% between 1986 and 2002. In the same period, the consumer price index has increased 57 percent. The most significant price increases of journals have occurred in the areas of science, medicine and technology, which has seen annual price increases of about 12%, on average, during the 1990s. However, we are now seeing double-digit inflation in the social sciences. Although the typical research library has spent three times the money in 2002 than it did in 1986 on serials, the number of serial titles purchased has declined significantly.

For OUS libraries, and in particular for PSU, UO and OSU, increases in science related journals have been especially severe. However, each OUS library has suffered, as costs continue to increase while budgets remain flat or decline. Information from the individual institutions is included below to document the impact on our libraries. Studies have suggested that this rise in journal costs results from the increasing commercialization of science publishing. Studies also show that commercially published journals are much more expensive than not-for-profit journals published by societies and professional associations (although there are exceptions). Commercial publishing organizations are publishing seven times more journals than are professional associations, whereas 20 years ago there were many more society journals than commercially-owned journals.

In the last 20 years, many not-for-profit journals, strapped for money, have been bought up by commercial publishers. Elsevier, the largest commercial publisher, owns about 1400 journals. Within Oregon, an example of what this commercialization means can be seen in the OSU experience. The OSU Libraries subscribe to around 400 Elsevier journals at a cost of $800,000. This represents 20% of the Libraries' entire materials budget and 25% of the serials budget. The essential problem is that the rising cost of these journals is occurring in an economic context of funding for OUS libraries that is itself in crisis. OUS libraries, as with all other aspects of their respective universities, face increasing cost for personnel. This makes the exceptionally steep increases in journal costs an even more arduous burden. With rising costs out of control, far beyond the CPI, and library budgets flat or in decline, it is unrealistic to expect the libraries’ collections to continue to meet the information needs of our constituents and increase significantly in the near future.

Less Information Available
The immediate and obvious strategy for this serials crisis is to cancel journals, perhaps cutting the most expensive and lowest-use journals, a practice that many libraries follow to determine which journals to cancel. Research libraries everywhere are engaging in often painful cutting of serial collections. Since 1992/93 OUS Libraries have cancelled subscriptions to over 4500 titles. Each title cut means teachers, students and researchers are denied access to critical information. However, we in the OUS Libraries believe that canceling large numbers of journals and buying fewer monographs are just superficial and short-term solutions to this problem. In fact, buying fewer serials only intensifies the problem for researchers and publishers. Scholars find it harder to find articles they need in their library collections, and publishers simply raise the prices of surviving journals to offset the loss of revenue from eliminated subscriptions.

Impacts on OUS Libraries 

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What Are Libraries Doing?

Many groups within higher education, as well as many granting agencies and foundations, are exploring new models of scholarly communication. One emerging system that has received growing support has been the open access model. In an open access environment,  the costs of publication are covered up front, through grants, author fees, and institutional memberships. Readership is free, or at least affordable. Although there are over 1,000 open access journals currently available, sustainability remains a major concern. The large commercial publishers still control the prestige and credibility factors, which are key to future research and tenure decisions. The library community remains hopeful that a new model will replace the current dysfunctional one, but in the meantime, we need to continue to provide reliable access to scholarly information that is essential for teaching and research. This will require an additional investment in library budgets.

What are OUS Libraries Doing?

OUS Libraries have taken a two-pronged approach to this crisis. First is to work with our administrations to increase our declining budgets in order to stem the flow of information away from our faculty and students. Our second approach is to find new solutions, including:

Electronic Only Subscriptions: A few publishers are offering libraries the option to subscribe to electronic subscriptions only. Modest savings, e.g. 90% of print costs, are possible under this model. However, there must be some guarantee of permanent access to the content.

Non-commercial Publications: The SPARC initiative is a collaborative effort between research libraries and scholarly societies to develop lower-cost journals, which are equivalent in focus and content to many high-cost commercial publications. SPARC is a worthy effort, but to date, there are only 1127 titles for open access journals available.

Open Archives: Public archives of preprints provide valuable access to resources in certain disciplines. However, not all disciplines have public archives, and faculty still depend upon the final publication which appears in refereed journals.

Resource Sharing: OUS libraries have lead the nation in developing and promoting resource sharing systems, e.g. Orbis Cascade Alliance and its SUMMIT catalog. Interlibrary loan statistics in all OUS libraries have increased dramatically in the last ten years and continue to do so. Much of this increase is due to the decline in serial holdings within the system. Because of the labor costs associated with interlibrary loans, resource sharing is most cost-effective for high-priced, low-use titles. UO/OSU recently put into place a plan for sharing high-price, low-use titles that will ultimately free up funding to purchase new titles.

Group Purchases: Consortial purchases of electronic resources have helped libraries to avoid higher costs associated with single licenses. These discounts do not apply to print resources.

Summary

OUS libraries are facing the same funding challenges for collections that face all academic libraries in the U.S. The specific issue for OUS is the impact of inflation on costs for books, journals, and databases and the lack of a consistent method for compensating for those increases. The result has been a steady erosion of purchasing power and a range of unfortunate but necessary actions to cut subscriptions and reduce purchases of books. The outcomes for the OUS campus communities are seen in fewer books and journal titles available and a decline in the access to information. The members of the OUS Library Council welcome this opportunity to contribute information and make recommendations to OUS for addressing these issues for the next biennium as well as subsequent years.