Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
distribution costs), much of the cost of producing print is a 'first copy
cost', which means that publishers will not make real savings until they
can eliminate print production altogether. However, most of the savings
of a move to exclusively electronic provision - estimated to amount to
£983 million per year globally (RIN, 2008) - will be accrued on the lib-
rary side, due to the reduction of costs relating to shelving and reshelving,
stack maintenance, checking in and out and physical storage space.
The serials crisis
It is often noted that the prices of subscription journals are increasing
above the rate of inflation. There are two important points to make in
respect of this statement. Firstly, so called 'big deals' (discounted
packages of large numbers of journal titles) and consortia sales mean
that many subscriptions are sold at a substantially discounted rate,
particularly those from the large commercial publishers, who are often
the subject of criticism regarding pricing. Secondly, global research and
development budgets have been increasing at a rate of around 3-4%
per year since the 1980s and there is a strong correlation between this,
the number of researchers and research outputs in the form of journal
articles (Mabe and Amin, 2001). This leads inexorably to an increase in
the number of active journals and journals that are growing - the
former showing a remarkably consistent rate of growth of around 3.5%
since around the year 1700 (Mabe, 2003). The result is that for most
established journals the price per article is falling, and is often a fraction
of what it was even a decade ago.
Nonetheless, library budgets have failed to keep pace with increasing
outputs. Current levels of availability have never been higher - a
testament to the library and publishing communities working together
- but libraries still face increasingly difficult choices in their serials
acquisitions. As scholarly outputs continue to increase, and with the
potentially dramatic impact of countries like China and India, this
problem too can only get worse.
