Chapter Six : Interpretation of the results
6.3 Benefits of electronic journals
6.4.1 Subscription costs
The overall costs of e-journals are quite comparable to those of print journals. The
subscription costs are the biggest threat to print journals and not the technology or production costs. The conventional pricing model which is used by the library for print journals has been the subscriptions to the individual title. This is inflexible. It relates to a physical product that can only have use at the printed issue level. The advent of electronic publishing has provided the opportunity to develop pricing models that fit more closely with the needs of the library and reflect functional value. (Keller 2001 : 284)
Subscription prices have caused and will continue to cause, most reductions in print holdings in the library. The drive for e-journals has a lot to do with the perceived deficiencies of the current system of print and with certain advantages of the new technology. ( Rosenblum 2000 : 3)
On a per title basis, the e-journal cost has superior purchasing power. For example, in 2004 the Physics print journal subscriptions cost an average of R 13 155.80 per title, while e- journals were R 11 247.66 per title. The difference is more remarkable when one considers that nearly all the e-journals come, with several years of back files (but not enough) and additional multimedia features. The cost of obtaining these back volumes in print is
prohibitive. The problem is to provide the fifteen plus years of backfiles for e-journals. From the results of the survey, both groups of respondents used articles that were older than ten years and preferred a backfile of more than fifteen years.
In the case of Chemistry, the print journal subscriptions cost an average of R 10 972.79, and the e-journal subscriptions cost an average of R 13 166.47. The e-journal costs are about the same as the print, but the e-journals have many added features that justify their purchase, probably the most important is that they are accessible any time and anywhere a valid user has an Internet connection.
The library does not only subscribe to the journal offering the best value. There is a demand for a portfolio of titles where the cost per use criterion is applied broadly. Examples of these portfolios of titles are the Institute of Physics (IOP) titles and the Royal Society of Chemistry titles. The Institute of Physics online subscription is made up of thirteen titles. For example, in the IOP package, the library pays an average of 1 294 pounds per title, but if it were to subscribe to the Journal of Physics : condensed matter on an individual basis, it would pay 4 560 pounds for that title alone. If the library were to subscribe to individual titles, the cost would be more than subscribing to the electronic only package. With the package the library has purchased access to titles that it would not have normally subscribed to. Ms Buchanan in her interview stated that it made economic sense based on the cost per title for the library to subscribe to these packages. For the researcher the question needs to be asked whether the additional titles would be required by academic staff and postgraduate students.
In addition to electronic titles subscribed to, the library also subscribes to full-text databases.
Access to these titles should be factored in. The cost of the journals in the full-text databases is not included in this study because these databases are not only used to find a known article or journal, but to perform general searches for information. These databases are also paid from a separate fund and cannot be factored into the subscription costs paid by the Faculty of Science. The journal costs that are included are those that are subscribed to individually or as publisher packages. Therefore full-text databases are not covered in the study because the coverage is selective and tend to offer full-text of more popular journals, general topic journals rather than scholarly titles.
A number of factors have contributed to the high subscription costs. The majority of the journals purchased have prices based in US dollars, pounds sterling and euros. Their cost to
the library is strongly dependent on the fluctuating value of the rand. The library pays for the journal subscriptions from October to November of each year. The timing when payment is made is very important because price is dictated by the current exchange rate. As illustrated by Figure 4 in section 5.4.4, the pound, euro and dollar were at their highest value in relation to the rand in October 2002 when journal payment was made.
There has been a real rise in the costs of journals all over the world. The Periodical Price survey done in 2003 by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) in the US has shown that journal prices have risen by 12 – 15% in 2003. This was due to the mergers between major publishing houses like Elsevier and Academic Press. (Van Orsdel 2003 : 56) The increase in the cost of journals is a consequence of world wide increases but was exacerbated by the high exchange rates. On the basis of this data, it can be concluded that if the library wished to return to the standard of the journal subscriptions at the beginning of the nineteen nineties, it would need to spend roughly twice as much on journal subscriptions for Science.
Journal prices have increased by 7.7% in 2003. The rate has been very similar over the past two years with 8.3% and 7.9% posted in 2001 and 2002 respectively. (Dingley 2003 : 193) While the costs of the journals as cited in the Library Journal Periodical Price Survey of 2003 has increased by 7.7% library spending on journals has only increased by 3.4% in that same period. The average price of a Chemistry journal in 2003 was R 26 394.00. The variation according to subject can be dramatic. Physics and Chemistry were especially hard hit by the increase. By 2004, however, the average price of a Chemistry journal had dropped to R 10 972.00.
Other factors that contribute to the difference in the subscription costs are the type of packages purchased. The cost studies in the literature reviewed has shown that journals in subscription packages are more costly, for example, the Big Deal which is an online
aggregation of journals that publishers offer as a one-price, one size fits all package. In the Big Deal, the library agrees to buy electronic access to all of a commercial publishers journals for a price based on current payments to that publisher. The content is bundled so that individual journals can not be cancelled. The ScienceDirect package offered by Elsevier is an example of such a licensing agreement. The library receives a discount if it purchases a multi-campus site subscription. (Van Orsdel 2003 : 56) Using aggregators for e-journals is a practical means for cost savings and efficiencies in the management of journals.
Ms Buchanan stated in her interview that the library purchasing methods are currently undergoing considerable changes with the growth of the library consortium, South African Site Licensing Initiative (SASLI). The consortia are increasingly negotiating with publishers for access by their members to e-journals and databases. The consortia have arranged a number of discounts for journal subscriptions with various publishers.
Another contributing factor to the subscription cost is the price charged by the subscription agents. These agents offer a wide range of services to the libraries, mainly related to print journals but increasingly to information-technology related services, such as automated serial management systems. Subscription agents survive because it is administratively
inconvenient and therefore expensive for libraries to deal with every publisher separately.
(Van Orsdel 2003 : 53) They are the wholesalers of the journals industry. According to Ms Buchanan UND Libraries pays Swets a thirteen percent administration and handling fee to provide this service. Therefore there seems to be no good reason to assume that it will be any more convenient for the library to have to deal with many publishers individually in the electronic era that it was in the era of print.
While package deals through an aggregator or the publisher offer access to wider arrays of journals, it is more difficult to cancel unwanted titles. The library is liable for the whole package. This may be the case even when the publisher drops certain journals or other publications which they were offering originally. The library also has access essentially to an electronic collection of articles, not a collection for print journal subscriptions.
Although the library did not save money by subscribing to e-journals, users have received many benefits. However, the introduction of e-journals may increase user expectations. In addition, e-journals increase the complexity of the library. Each new system seems to work differently from all the others in the library, leading to confusion for both library users and librarians who must cope with the myriad different search interfaces and indexing practices.