Negotiations continue
Sustaining journal access
BY WENDY SODERBURG
UCLA Today Staff
The University of California is struggling to maintain faculty access
to electronic journal literature at a time when its budget is tightening
and serial prices are rising, said a UC library executive and head of
the California Digital Library (CDL).
The dismal effects of the state budget crisis on UC’s ability
to maintain access to such resources was the topic of an Oct. 14 meeting
of the Academic Senate Committee on Library, which generated so much interest
that Senate Chair Clifford Brunk opened the talk to all faculty.
Addressing a full house at the Faculty Center, UC University Librarian
for Systemwide Planning and Scholarly Information Daniel Greenstein, who
is also executive director of the CDL, focused on UC’s recent negotiation
of its license with Elsevier, one of its biggest publishers and a leader
in scientific, technical and medical titles.
“I’m afraid it’s not the best of news that I come
to report on,” Greenstein said. “Universities are trying to
keep up with the rapid acceleration in serial pricing in an economy that
doesn’t see their budgets increasing anywhere near as quickly.”
UC libraries are spending more money on serials every year, Greenstein
said, but are not buying any more titles. To cope with the problem, UC
libraries historically have used two strategies. The first, deep resource
sharing, involves pooling UC’s resources and buying power. In UC’s
case, this has meant designating the CDL to help the UC libraries act
together in acquiring digital information that all of them wanted. Deep
resource sharing, however, is a short-term measure that only postpones
the inevitable crisis, Greenstein said.
The second strategy, supporting alternative means of scholarly publishing,
is one that Greenstein and the CDL have been promoting. “We want
to encourage faculty to think differently about how they manage their
intellectual property,” he said. “Currently, we support journals
and other publishers that have promising business models that don’t
inflict such punitive pricing on universities.” Two such online
journal providers, Public Library of Science and BioMed Central, support
themselves through page charges, for example.
While both strategies undoubtedly help, they won’t erase the consequences
if UC fails to renegotiate its systemwide agreement with Elsevier, whose
ScienceDirect online database contains such premier titles as The Lancet,
Brain Research and Nuclear Physics B. On the other hand, Greenstein said,
Elsevier represents only 25% of UC’s overall electronic journal
use, but 50% of the cost.
“In planning our negotiating strategy, we recognize that this
problem of inflating serial prices is not sustainable for us,” Greenstein
said. To pay the price, he said, “We have always caved under the
pressure” and made cuts to collections, restricted hiring and cut
services. “We’ve done that consistently because we’re
committed to supporting faculty research and teaching.”
As of press time, Elsevier had not budged in its offer of a 6.5% price
increase over a five-year period. The matter has gone to the Committee
of Chancellors, which was unanimous in its decision not to negotiate individually
with Elsevier as long as the company failed to come to terms on a systemwide
agreement.
“The hope is that Elsevier will ultimately take the $38 million
we’re offering and the security it represents, rather than the insecurity
and the unknown of dealing independently with the campuses for print,”
Greenstein said. “It’s not a good situation. It’s not
a happy situation. But it is the situation.”
For an overview of the problem, see www.library.ucla.edu/collections. |
