Faced with an immediate need to reduce our budget for AY2017-2018, Armacost Library faculty reviewed for cost and use (cost-per-use), amongst other factors, stand alone journal subscriptions, two "big deal" journal packages (Sage Premier, Wiley Database Model), and subscriptions we receive at a discount through SCELC (Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium).
Decisions needed to be made within a very brief timeframe:
March 2017 - Review cost-per-use, content overlap, relevance to curriculum, essential publication in discipline, discoverable in currently subscribed abstract & index databases (e.g. PsychINFO, Sociological Abstracts)
April 2017 - Consult with disciplinary faculty; final decisions
May 2017 - Communicate final cancellation decisions; e-resources team moves forward with cancellations
*Journal cancellations will end according to their subscription cycle, which will fall variously between July 2017 - January 2018.
Inflation rates for journal subscriptions average 5-7% a year. We also see annual inflationary increases on our systems, lower than for journal and database subscriptions yet still significant. This year, in addition to inflationary increases we have been asked to reduce our materials and operations budget by nearly 10%. Many of our materials and operations costs are fixed and in multiple-year contracts. Thus the bulk of the budget reduction will impact our serials subscriptions (stand alone journals, journal packages, databases) and book (+ CDs, DVDs, scores, other one-time purchases) funds.
We decided not to cancel any of our "big deal" journal packages at this time. The cost to individually subscribe to significant and high use journals within those packages would likely have not found us much savings. Using a variety of criteria, and in consultation with disciplinary faculty, we identified ~$83,000 worth of subscriptions that (we hope) will have the least impact on student and faculty scholarship. Articles in these journals will be discoverable in our currently subscribed article and index (A&I) databases.
Journal articles may be ordered by members of the University of Redlands community, at no cost to themselves, through interlibrary loan services. Electronic delivery of articles usually takes place within 2-5 working days. We will continue to work toward quicker and more seamless turnaround on interlibrary loan requests.
We will monitor the increase in interlibrary loan request expenditures over AY 2017-2018 to determine the real impact to our materials budget.
For more information regarding the journal review process, please talk with your subject liaison librarian.
We will review cancellation decisions next year, as well as continue to review our subscriptions for relevance to the curriculum, significance for research in discipline, cost and use.
Thank you for engaging in this process with us.
