We find ourselves in a rather odd environment: Scholars and researchers consume vast quantities of scholarly information, most of it published and fully refereed. Then they add original research and insights and generate new scholarly work that, in turn, needs to be communicated to the world. What's odd is that, at the point of creation, the creator turns over all rights to the fruits of his/her research to a self-interested outsider - the for-profit, multi-million dollar international publishing industry. Big publishing then charges the creator and (perhaps more important for this story) also the Library a vast amount of money to buy back access to the new research.
Once seen as the salvation of library budgets, digitization of information has led instead to an extraordinary explosion in costs. Some trends already emerging from this evolutionary process are, generally, not good for libraries:
- Journal titles are "bundled" into big packages (e.g. Elsevier's ScienceDirect with 1,281 titles).
- No print cancellations are allowed; the total cost is fixed, regardless of the mix of titles subscribed to in the package.
- Licensing fees are based on campus FTE counts; these have the greatest impact on large research libraries like Penn's.
- Scholarly society publishing operations drastically increase their digital access charges to make up for lost revenue from individual print subscriptions.
- Scholarly societies use the same bundling/no cancellation/fixed-cost models as their for-profit colleagues (ACS, for example)
Why do these issues need your attention? The simple and unvarnished truth is that this Library's budget, indeed most academic library budgets, cannot keep pace with these escalating costs. The impact cuts across all disciplines.
Penn's libraries spend in excess of $7.8 million annually on serials subscriptions. Over the fiscal years July 1999 - June 2004, serial costs increased by an average rate of about 39%, but the Library's overall income (from allocated costs) increased over that same period by a little more than 14%. In the current fiscal year, the Institute for Scientific Information projects an overall serials cost increase of 9.4% for libraries like Penn's. Compare that with our FY05 budget increase of 3% and the problem we face as a community becomes obvious.
- This disparity - between geometrically rising costs and modestly increased income - has resulted in significant serials cancellations over the last few years.
- Since we are now spending in excess of 70% of our total information budget on serials, we have had to cut back significantly on the purchase of scholarly monographs. I'm sure I don't need to spell out the long term implications of this trend on a tenure process that, in many disciplines, depends on monographic publication.
- Finally, we get frequent requests from faculty and students for new digital resources. Our ability to respond favorably to these very reasonable requests is compromised by our inability to control the costs of our on-going information commitments.
The issues are not easy to sort out. This web site is designed to foster a campus-wide dialogue on strategies to address a situation that needs the attention of the stakeholders - all of us who live and work in this extraordinarily active and creative learning, teaching, and research environment. Please explore this site for more information about current initiatives and for ways in which you can join the effort to restore balance to the scholarly communication and publishing process.
- Carton Rogers
Vice Provost and Director of Libraries
Vice Provost and Director of Libraries