From: Pippa Smart <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2012 08:37:58 +0100
I appreciate the numbers don't stack up when considering a library
budget, but simply looking at the number of journals can give a false
impression of what the increasing subscriptions are actually buying.
There are three complications: the number of articles, the number of
accesses, and the archive access. The same journals published in 2000
and today are probably "larger" with greater frequency and total
number of articles published each year. Equally, where Harvard may
have subscribed to one print (or limited access) back in 2000
subscriptions now usually allow unlimited access within an
institution, over several campus sites, and off-site access to remote
researchers. Thirdly, many journals may now include access to
archives, often going back to volume 1.
I appreciate that this doesn't help the library budgets, but it often
provides greater "value" for the subscription price.
Pippa Smart
Research Communication and Publishing Consultant
PSP Consulting
email: [log in to unmask]
Web: www.pspconsulting.org
On 26 July 2012 22:54, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> From: Sean Andrews <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2012 23:23:17 -0500
>
> On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 12:41 PM, Joe Esposito wrote:
>
>> From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
>> Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2012 20:33:00 -0700
>>
>> Nothing new in this article for members of this list, but rather
>> surprising for its length.
>>
>> Can anyone untangle the numbers? Harvard's journals budget looks incredibly low.
>
> The $3.75 million is just a subset of the subscriptions (coming from
> "certain publishers") which they claim have risen especially high in
> recent years. I can't figure the difference between "current serials"
> and "electronic serials" in the NCES database - and Harvard only has
> one year of numbers for e-serials (2010: $8.5 million) - but
> according to the most recent numbers, "Current Serials (which are for
> 2010, the year cited as the baseline, so not as much help) rose
> sharply and suddenly. On the other hand, it appears they were getting
> a good bit more for their money overall. Middle number here is
> "Current serials" expenditures; bottom number is "current serials
> held"
>
> 2000 - $8,533,502 – 190,528
>
> 2002 - $9,735,872 – 106,869
>
> 2004 – $10,497,758 – 100,009
>
> 2006 - $9,911.521 – 98,988
>
> 2008 - $9,248,115 – 110,628
>
> 2010 - $15, 233,300 - 157854
>
> So certainly these were cheaper in 2000, but since then both the price
> and the number of serials has held steady, till 2010 when they bought
> about 40% more and paid about 60% more. Again, this is for the period
> immediately preceding the baseline. Not sure of the overall budget
> today.
>
>> Also, 50% of all journals are published by a small number of commercial publishers? 50% of the dollars, perhaps, but 50% of the titles?
>
> No you are right: it is likely dollars. It is a misreading of the
> source (handily linked and open access), which states that:
>
>> Worldwide, the scientific, technical, and medical (STM) segment of the academic journal publishing industry generates a little more than $19 billion in revenue, with the top ten publishers accounting for approximately 43% of that revenue, according to a recent market research report referenced by Library Journal
>
> It appears that both this and the LJ stat are specific to the STM
> field. Though in that field, the article goes on to claim that,
> "Three giants dominate: Reed Elsevier, Springer and Wiley. Estimates
> indicate that these three account for approximately 42% of all journal
> articles published." But the citation for this is a report issued in
> 2002 by Morgan Stanley (i.e. now 10 years ago) on Reed's profitability
> and, so far as I can tell, it makes little mention of Springer. So
> not sure where they got that number.
>
> Sean Johnson Andrews
> [log in to unmask]
> Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies
> Columbia College, Chicago
> 2011-2013 ACLS Public Fellow
> Program Officer
> The National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education
> http://www.nitle.org | tel. 703-597-6948 | fax 512 819-7684
> iChat: [log in to unmask] | skype: jnskolja | twitter: @skja76
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