Academic librarians are facing problems trying to maintain their serials collection in the face of an explosion in academic research, an increase in journal subscriptions, budgetary cutbacks, and lack of storage space. An interesting academic trend of the 20th century has been to use the academic journal "as a medium for priority claiming, quality control, and archiving of scientific work ... not as a medium for rapid communication of research results" (Bennion 1994,25). Overall, academic research and scholarly publication have exploded in the last two decades, with more than 140, 000 journals being published each year (Gilbert 1995). For example, more than $250,000,000 was spent on serials in ARL libraries in 1988/89, which is equivalent to the budget spent by NASA to undertake a major planetary exploration (Webster 1990,131).
If professors are expected to publish, and there are only so many articles that can fill a journal and so much competition to get articles accepted for publication, it forces new publications to crop up on a continual basis. For instance, highly respected journals like Science and Nature must reject a very large number of the manuscripts they receive each year (Dancik 1990,93). Studies show that 80-90% of social science submissions, and 20-60% of biological articles are rejected, but most of these will eventually be published somewhere else (Dancik 1990,93). To put this into perspective, it has been estimated that in the field of mathematics alone, one million papers have been published to date, half of which appeared in the last ten years (AUCC 1996).
The trend seems to be an increase in highly specialized journals that have low circulation rates, with the numbers continuing to grow (Gilbert 1995). Since some of the specialty science journals are relatively new, and therefore, have not had time to corner a sizeable portion of their individual market, they will subsequently be more expensive to buy (Cummings 1992,xxi). In addition, a very small number of publishing houses are producing science journals, which has an impact upon price as well (Cummings 1992,xxi). Also significant has been the increase in the number of interdisciplinary areas of study (AUCC 1996), with universities being intrinsically involved in the development of many new disciplines, such as Biometrics, Genetic Technology, and Bioengineering. Meanwhile, all the standard disciplines are still thriving and producing literature, making it easy to see why there is an increase in the total body of published knowledge along with a demand for new publication outlets" (AUCC 1996). Moreover, these new scholarly fields are being published in thousands of highly specialized journals that cannot support themselves unless they charge extremely high prices (Bennion 1994,25). For instance, there are many scientific journals that charge thousands of dollars for an annual subscription, although studies have shown that less than one percent of all science journals will ever be read (Gilbert 1995). Scientific and technological journals are often published by commercial organizations, rather than university presses or research institutions, which makes them automatically more expensive (Cummings 1992,94).
These trends in academic research have caused an explosion in the amount of scholarly information published, which has serious and complex implications for libraries and university budgets. These patterns are exacerbated by the huge funding cuts leveled against post-secondary institutions, inflation, increases in the price of academic publications, problems with space, the costs of binding, and exchange rates. Libraries can no longer maintain subscriptions to all the journals their scholars want access to, and that is what is at the heart of the dilemma: what to keep, and what to cancel. These decisions have major implications for both students and faculty members particularly in the sciences, but also affect the budgets for monographs in the humanities and social sciences. The serials budget for the sciences and technology far exceeds the money being spent on monographs for the humanities and social sciences. It is also problematic because librarians have historically operated in the framework of a service industry, and felt capable of providing information for everyone. If journal subscriptions are consuming already constrained budgets, then there is an unfair balance in acquisition patterns in research libraries. How are libraries and their staff coping with the ever increasing dilemma, and are there any solutions that can help alleviate the inherent problems for the long term?
Libraries need tough administrators to take this problem in hand and make it clear that the university library will not support expensive esoteric publications. An annual review should be undertaken to find out which journals are being used, and those that should be canceled. This should maintain a dynamism in the serials collection by getting rid of the obsolete, and bringing in new ideas. Libraries can no longer continue to carry subscriptions simply because it always has. This strategy has to be coupled with a highly organized system of document delivery. If students and faculty members do not have access to everything they need in-house, there has to be a well-coordinated process for filling collection gaps. An organized document delivery service is imperative for university libraries that have decided they can no longer provide all possible requests from the in-house collection (Gilbert 1995). As Gardener writes in Library Collections:
No library exists today in isolation from others. At one time, some librarians thought it was possible to build self-sufficient collections that would serve the needs of their users . . . Today most librarians realize that with the explosion in knowledge and in publication that has occurred in the twentieth century, it is impossible for any library to satisfy its users completely. Some form of cooperation is necessary between libraries of differing types and sizes (Gardener 1981,190).
Document delivery is simply a supplement to interlibrary loan for journals. The difference is that besides obtaining materials from other libraries, they can be purchased from commercial vendors as well. In the sciences, one of the most valuable organizations for the dissemination of information is Canada's own CISTI, a division of the National Research Council of Canada, which has an excellent document delivery system for theses, conference proceedings, technical reports, journals, and grey literature in many different languages (Hurst 1991,22). It has one of the largest document delivery systems in North America and is one of the most important purveyors of its kind in the world, getting approximately 1600 requests per day (Hurst 1991,22). Many academic libraries are now beginning to revolt against the escalating journal prices, and prefer to offer their students and faculty members a subsidized rate for bringing a copy of a journal article in from another university or vendor, rather than continuing to pay for very specialized journals which are read by few people, and can sometimes cost seven thousand dollars a year.
The challenges for document delivery are to ensure quick turnaround times for those who are making requests, and to keep the cost of the service to an amount which can be tolerated. If students are already paying huge tuition fees, and are also expected to pay for expensive document delivery services on top of them, it will not bode well for universities. In addition, science libraries like the Taylor Library of the University of Western Ontario must cancel journals for many reasons, but they have to make sure they are not choosing too many from one discipline. Document delivery and resource sharing between nearby universities can work, when there is a quick turnaround time to lesson the inconvenience for students and faculty.
Certainly, the future trend in document delivery will be an escalation in its use, as more libraries realize they cannot continue to pay huge prices for certain journals, and connected to this will be more commercial vendors competing for the supply contracts to libraries, and offering quicker and quicker service. One of the biggest problems is that we lose the choice to serpendititiously roam the stacks for materials as libraries continue to cancel more journals and use document delivery in their place. Furthermore, as Gilbert has said, the development of a core collection policy, along with the necessary collaborative links with other universities, might enable universities to break free of this crippling economic cycle (Gilbert 1995); however, in Collections at Risk: Revisiting Serial Cancellations in Academic Libraries, Chrzastowski and Schmidt, caution that if all research libraries cancel all the same titles, then libraries will no longer carry the more esoteric publications that give them some individuality, nor will they have any reason to borrow from other institutions (Chrzastowski 1996,363-364).
There has been much discussion about electronic journals helping to curb library budgets, and there may be merit in working toward a virtual library for science journals. Libraries should use technological advances to solve their economic and space problems in the future. In A Perspective on the Politics of Change from the United States, Webster unveils a revolutionary outlook:
In the future, we envision electronic databases which will list available articles via a standard article number. Faculty and students will then, with a single key stroke, be able to order an electronic article to be delivered quickly to their workstations to be printed, stored, and accessed at will. Publishers could be compensated for use of their databases. This process would eliminate the cost of printing, storage, [binding], and delivery. Libraries will no longer need to store unused journals, and readers will have access to a world of knowledge instead of just the materials held in their local library (Webster 1990,132).
The digitization of information can speed up availability while saving printing and shipping costs, and offers the convenience of not having to rush to the library every time an item is needed (Wills). Electronic journals may prove to be the panacea for all disciplines, but in particular, the sciences and technologies, since publications in those areas tend to be quickly dated, and are used more for "priority claiming, quality control, and archiving" (Bennion 1994,25). In addition, scientists use informal channels to circulate their findings long before publication takes place, with estimates that in 1979, 90 percent of research results were known beforehand (Bennion 1994,25). These numbers would likely be higher today with the influence of the Internet on academia. Currently, scholars are using the World Wide Web and e-mail to track down information, and to exchange ideas with colleagues.
There are many obstacles that must be overcome before electronic journals become the standard in scholarly communication, with the primary one being the extent to which tenure, pay increases, and faculty reputations are tied into the publication of research in paper-based journals. For any transformation to take place, university administrations must lead the way because academics are not going to submit their articles to electronic journals, peer-reviewed or not, unless they are persuaded by administration that these publications will be considered on par with paper journals. Other problems include copyright issues, lack of advertising revenues, consistency of standards, upgrading of university communication networks, the uncertainty of accompanying costs, and the need to ensure that information cannot be manipulated and changed (Cummings 1992).
Overall, we must stay focused on what we are actually doing to the collections when we cancel so much that is in print. In addition, as libraries continue to access needed materials outside their institutions, they will have to allocate more staff to handle the requests and act as liaisons between vendors and service providers such as CISTI, for things to run smoothly. Document delivery will help alleviate some of the problems associated with the crisis in science serials, but nothing short of a complete overhaul of the scientific and technological disciplines will provide any long term solutions, and that is not going to happen any time soon.
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