Chapter Three: Literature review
3.1 Introduction
Many libraries are finding themselves faced with the difficult decision of whether or not to cancel print journal subscriptions for titles that they also receive electronically. The cost of acquiring both formats of the same title is often the driving factor behind this decision.
Reflecting upon the short history and fast development of electronic journals (e-journals), there is no doubt that e-journals open up many exciting service opportunities for university libraries. However, e-journals bring issues with them which merit careful consideration as they are complex, interdependent and have considerable consequences.
This technology possesses both advantages and disadvantages. Over the last ten years, serial review and cancellation strategies have occupied a prominent place in library literature.
Not surprisingly, although the impetus for most cancellation projects is a combination of reduced growth in funding and increasing periodical subscription costs, the consensus is that there is no monetary solution to the problem. Even if funding increases it will likely never match increases in costs, because journal prices have risen so dramatically in the last few years, as much as 215%. Consequently, the emphasis is now on redesigning and
restructuring serial collections. The widespread and increasing availability of full-text serials has added a new twist to the process. (Frazer 1999: 1)
There is a large and growing amount of literature on electronic publishing and even more specific subtopic of electronic scholarly journals. Most of this is recent, having being written in the last five to seven years. While the literature covers a wide range of topics such as how to start an e-journal, pricing and cost, cataloguing, and the relationship between print and e-journals, hardly any of the literature consists of reports on research studies or surveys on e- scholarly journals. Much has been written on e-journals and even on the selection of electronic resources for a library collection, but little has been written on reducing duplication between print and electronic formats of journals and the factors libraries should consider when making these decisions. (Rupp-Serrano 2002 : 370)
As a literature review, this chapter identifies various trends and issues surrounding electronic journals. A major survey of the literature on this topic is needed, as over 250 new
publications have appeared in the last year. (Veldsman 2004 : 2) Much of the research about e-journals has been driven by technology rather than being led by demand. Another
peculiarity is that it is being driven almost entirely by its authors rather than its readers.
(Woodward 1997 : 144) A significant proportion of the recent literature has concentrated on the views of authors and the scholarly community in general and has emphasized the scholar‟s role as author. Librarians‟ concerns have focused on the difficulties of providing access to e-journals for users, and archiving them for future access. The views of journal users have been accorded comparatively little attention. (Woodward 1997 : 144)
A survey of the South African literature reveals that no local studies have been done on comparison of costs and benefits of journal collections, both print and electronic. Presently there is no published research on cost-benefit studies of a journal collection. As stated in section 1.10 Dr Nicole Geslin, a researcher at the University, undertook a study on the alternatives and challenges to commercial journal publishing. She investigated the acquisition of scholarly resources (journals) at the University of Natal libraries. Her investigations are in-house and not yet published. She looked into the University of Natal library budgets and past and current measures to try to cope with the journal crisis and so on and has also established contact with the six South African library consortia. (Geslin 2002 : 10) Her investigation focused on the current situation and possible measures to overcome its problems, but is not a cost benefit study.
A study of the relevant international literature also indicates that there were no comparable studies on journal analysis, to the one the researcher intends doing. The literature on comparative studies has covered other areas but nothing has been done on journal collections, print or electronic. Most work has concentrated on three topics : technical or technological developments; the conversion from print only to a dual format; and an examination of input and handling requirements. User studies have necessarily lagged behind, since they could not readily be carried out until e-journals became more generally available. Much of the early research in this area simulated real usage to the extent that it was possible to do so. (Woodward 1998 : 2)
A review of the literature specifically on the measurement of e-journal collections yielded very little. The literature has focused on evolving standards for e-journal statistics rather than on their applications. Instead of responding to the need for data to create effective metrics for assessing titles or collections, existing standards for e-journal statistics appear strongly derivative of database statistics. Without this information on e-content, measures of value of e-journals become difficult to create because the context needed to understand the available data is missing. Some currently available e-journal usage statistics illustrate new possibilities for assessing relative value and suggest how a broad set of usage statstics could be useful for collection management. (Hahn 2002 : 217) A recent development has been the
Association of Research Libraries (ARL) E-metrics project launched in June 2000 to determine how to develop statistics and performance measures for e-journals. (Degener 2000 : 5)
A number of studies have looked at the options for accessing e-journals and various access- related issues. (Blagden 1998; Brin 1994; Cain 1995; Evan 1996; Gossen 1995; Hawbaker 1996; Kane 1997). Cost benefit studies in librarianship have focused on library services and not products. More attempts at cost benefit analysis have been applied to industrial libraries than to libraries of other kinds. (White 1998 : 503)
The literature covers the various approaches to measuring the benefits of an information service and the attempts made by libraries to justify the existence of their services by doing a cost-benefit analysis. The different services provided by a library compete with each other for limited funds. The question of whether it is better for the library to provide the service through an in-house library or in some other way is presently under consideration. (Lancaster 1988 : 157) A similar approach could be to make a comparison between the cost of the librarian providing some service and the cost of the librarian‟s customers undertaking the activity for themselves. In order to calculate the cost of a library service, all components of the cost must be identified.
Various studies have concentrated on costs such as personnel, materials consumed, equipment use, space occupied, leasing of databases and purchase and maintenance of collections. (Kingma 1996, 1998; Kingma and Mouravieva 2000) Some studies have looked at the true cost-effectiveness of journals. Varian (1996) investigated the pricing of journals.
He suggested that a possible solution was to use differential pricing by packaging the products in two different forms to meet each market. Halliday (2000) on the other hand developed three models based on a literature review and on personal communication with practitioners. The results of that study indicated that journals can be produced and distributed at a modest fee as long as the subscriber base is greater than 500.
Other cost studies of journals have focused on cost per use, or interlibrary loans. (Blagden 1998 : 141; Evans 1996; Halliday 2001; Kidd 1998; Milne 1991) These cost studies have compared the cost of subscribing to a journal compared to the cost of canceling a subscription in favour of interlibrary loans or cost-per-use. These studies have tried to determine which titles could be acquired more economically through interlibrary loans or document delivery rather than by journal subscriptions or as an alternative to maintaining subscriptions. With e-journals, using interlibrary loans is only an option in a limited number of cases.
Among the first to devise a formula to determine cost-per-use using data from a serial survey, Milne and Tiffany (1991) introduced the tagging method as a way to track serial use. For each journal title, a paper tag was affixed to the front cover of every bound and unbound volume that had a publication date within five years of the beginning of the date of the survey.
Gossen and Irving (1995) described a periodical use study and compared their derived cost- per-use to the Association for Research Libraries/ Research Libraries Group (ARL/RLG) figure for an interlibrary loan. Kingma (1996, 1998; Kingma and Mouravieva 2000) offered a detailed examination of the costs and benefits of maintaining journal subscriptions compared with acquiring articles from an external source. Others have looked at the cost of subsidized document delivery compared to the cost of maintaining journal subscriptions. These studies have found that it was more cost-effective to use document delivery for high cost low use journals than maintain journal subscriptions. Most of these studies have concluded that each library would have to carry out its own evaluation because what may be cost-effective in one library may not be cost-effective in another library. (Blagden 1998; 141; Evans 1996; Halliday 2001; Kidd 1998)
These studies have focused on an analysis of library services such as document delivery, literature searches, or the development of new products or the identification of ways to reduce
costs of existing products but not an analysis of electronic journals or print journals.
(Lancaster 1988 : 157)
Very few analyses of the cost-effectiveness of participation in network or consortium or resource sharing have been published. (Brin 1994 : 209) In the opinion of this author, no completely credible or definitive cost-benefit studies have been applied to university libraries.
Several surveys give a valuable analysis of the developments in scholarly communication.
(Cargille 1999; McCabe 1997; Milne 1999; Kent 1999; Keller 2001; Oppenheim 2000;
Sosteric 1996). However, none of these studies focused exclusively on scholarly journals.
The place of the e-journal in the electronic future is hotly debated. Much of this debate is not new and has little to do with the issue of print versus electronic access. The continuing rise of journal prices has perhaps become the biggest factor driving the demands for change.
Explanations for these rises in prices vary, and have been a source of much dispute. ( Mobley 1998 : 5) There are many predictions on how far-reaching e-journals can be.