Cost of scientific journals 'staggering'

Every quarter, students wonder how to pay for expensive textbooks. The rising costs of scientific and scholarly journals is creating the same problem for the UW libraries, said Timothy Jewell, head of Collection Management Services, which manages research databases and scholarly journals.

It's hard to imagine a major research library without racks of publications, but journal prices stretch the UW library budget each year, Jewell said.

"The prices of [the journals] are just staggering," said UW President Mark Emmert. "If you went down a list of some of these major journals, you would see series with four issues a year for over $8,000."

According to Collection Management Services, the UW libraries will spend about $8 million on serials this year alone. The serials include journals and various other databases.

Jewell cited publisher consolidation as the primary reason for soaring prices.

"A lot of the smaller publishers have been bought out by large, multinational corporations," he said. "The largest scientific, technical and health journal publisher, Elsevier, has been overtaking publishers for the last 10 years or so."

With fewer companies dominating the market, journal prices have risen exponentially Despite an estimated 7 to 8 percent increase each year aimed at journal costs, the libraries' budget isn't keeping up with escalating expenses, Jewell said.

"In years that we can't find the necessary funding to pay, we have to cancel our subscriptions to stay in budget," he said.

Although the library staff has increased funding, there is no end to cancellations in sight, said Mel DeSart, head of the Engineering Library.

"I've only been here for five and a half years, and I've already been through two cancellations," he said. "They are substantial cuts - we've cut thousands of titles over the last ten years."

Deciding which subscriptions to terminate involves library staff, professors and researchers. Library heads said they have to consider the journal's relative prestige and importance as well as its significance to faculty members and departmental research.

"We can look at all of the numbers, but if [a publication] is the primary source for a faculty member's research, then we can't do without it," DeSart said. "In some cases, we end up dropping a journal with better numbers, but overall it will cause less of an impact to the University."

Chemistry professor Pradipsinh Rathod uses scientific journals three to five times a day for research. Rathod said he is happy with the libraries' current collection, but added that losing resources would cause major problems for faculty.

"Cutting important journals would be devastating," Rathod said. "Librarians and scientists have to be vigilant to get the optimum use out of existing resources."

Money set aside for books is paying for the costly journals.

"That is typical of libraries today," Jewell said. "A lot of book publishers in the market have been concerned since there are fewer academic dollars chasing their products."

The introduction of electronic journals has also affected library collections. Purchasing both print and online publications is too costly, so the UW libraries have been moving towards just online sources.

Electronic journals provide wider access to materials, but the risks involved worry the library staff.

"When we buy print journals, we receive them, catalog them, and they go out on the shelves. With electronic journals, the content is still at the publisher's end," said DeSart. "The issue is whether we have long-term access. If we cancel a subscription, do we still have the content we paid for?"

Emerging smaller companies are offering an alternative to big publishers and overpriced journals -- and giving libraries hope.

"Major publishers aren't the only game in town anymore," DeSart said. "They are still the biggest game and the most powerful game, but there are these other little players that didn't used to be there. They're starting to pull ever so slightly away from what these corporations have had all to themselves for years, which is promising."

Without major changes in the academic publishing market, Jewell said he isn't sure where the libraries will be a few years from now.

"I really hope that the strategies we are practicing will work, but it is an open question," he said. "We really just don't know."