From: Rick Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2013 16:14:34 +0000


[log in to unmask] asked:

>>Would you really consider dropping a journal with say 70% percent of the content available after a year?  I'm not a librarian but I just wonder how much of a difference allowing immediate archiving of the accepted version really makes in subscription decisions.

Rick Anderson replied:

It depends. Obviously, a subscription provides enhanced access over
green repository access. But as I mentioned before, the less central a
journal is to my institution's curricular and research focus, the more
willing I'll be to settle for less-than-ideal access. If I had a
generous materials budget, the calculus would be different—but the
combination of a relatively stagnant budget and
constantly/steeply-rising journal prices means that I have to settle
for solutions that are less than ideal. One less-than-ideal solution
is to maintain a subscription despite the fact that 70% of the
journal's content is available immediately (or after a year). That
solution is attractive because it provides more complete and
convenient access, but it's less than ideal because it ties up money
that can't be used to secure access to a journal that is not green at
all. Another less-than-ideal solution is to cancel the subscription
and rely on green access. The downside of that approach is that
repository access is a pain and may be incomplete; the upside is that
it frees up money that I can use to provide access to another needed
journal that offers no green access.

These issues are complex. The subscription decisions we make in
libraries are binary (either your subscribe or you don't), but the
criteria we have to use in making those decisions are not binary—we're
typically considering multiple criteria (relevance, price, cost per
download, demonstrated demand, etc.) that exist on a continuum. One
thing is for certain, though: the more a journal's content is
available for free, and the quicker it becomes available for free, the
less likely it is that we'll maintain a subscription. I think that's
the only rational position to take when there are so many journals out
there that our faculty want, and that we're not subscribing to because
we're out of money.

---
Rick Anderson
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