Record Journals Now Deadline: November 23, 2016

We need your help identifying all journals essential to your teaching and research so that we know the titles for which a subscription must continue.

Budget vs. Inflation
The annual cost increase for library journals hovers between 5 and 8 percent while our budgetary increase has been around 1% since 2009.
Packages vs. Subscriptions
Budget by Decade
Budget vs. Inflation
Num Journals vs. Scholarly Output

Communications

Read library director Jennifer Paustenbaugh’s recent letter to all faculty about access to research journals.

Tools

FAQ Contact Us Search for Journals by Subject Search by subject to help identify key journals

About

The Library actively supports learning, teaching, and research by providing the information resources needed by students and faculty. In spite of generous funding over the years, the persistent cost inflation has put us in a position where we are unable to provide access to all the content we have in the past.

We are requesting your assistance as we make journal cancellation and retention decisions. We need all faculty members to log into the Faculty Journal Needs System before November 23rd and tell us which journals are essential for your, and your students’, teaching and research. We do not need you to rank our entire journal collection; just tell us which journals are essential to your research.

Our contracts for journal packages are staggered over the next few years. This academic year (2016–2017), we will be making decisions about which Springer and Sage titles to cancel. The next academic year (2017–2018), we will be making cancelling decisions for Wiley titles and the following academic year (2018–2019) we will be deciding on Elsevier titles.

FAQ

  1. Why do we need to cut journals?
  2. What is the timeline for any cancellations?
  3. What do you need me to do?
  4. How will you use the data I give you?
  5. Who can I contact if I have questions?

1. Why do we need to cut journals?

Multi-year contracts with journal publishers caps the journal inflation rate at 4%, when the industry average is 6–8%. Even with the negotiated low inflation rate, our budget has only increased at an average of 0.7% since 2010. Because of that combination of factors, we no longer have the means to sign multi-year deals.

Journal packages are not available outside of multi-year deals so we must now subscribe to journals individually. Despite journal packages giving us access to nearly all of the publisher’s journals at a steep discount, we can no longer fiscally sustain packages.

If we take Springer journals as an example, for the same cost we are paying for the package, instead of over 2,400 journals we would only be able to subscribe to around 190 titles. To save money, we would need to cut more than that though. We also anticipate an increased need for Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery so we need to cut even more to accommodate paying for those higher costs as well.

2. What is the timeline for any cancellations?

October – November 23, 2016
Deadline for you to submit your list of essential and helpful journals to journalneeds.lib.byu.edu
November 30 – December 31, 2016
Your department representative submits a departmentally ranked list of journals to journalneeds.lib.byu.edu
January – February 2017
Librarians will review the lists, study usage data, compare costs, and communicate with department representatives, faculty, and students from across campus
March 2017
Librarians will distribute a list of proposed retentions and cancellations for your input
April 2017
Librarians will finalize the list of cancellations and retentions based on your input balanced with other needs across campus
May – August 2017
Librarians will begin working with publishers to initiate the cancellation process
September 1, 2017
All cancellations and retentions must be submitted to publishers by September 1st.
December 31, 2017
Access to cancelled materials from January 2018 forward will cease; we will continue to have some access to material subscribed to prior to January 2018

3. What do you need me to do?

We are requesting that all faculty submit a list of essential and helpful journals to the library before November 23, 2016. You may do so by logging in to our Faculty Journal Needs system. If you are a department representative, we need additional help from you. Please see our Department Representative page for more information.

We need to identify all the journals that are necessary for teaching and research across campus, regardless of publisher. As you add titles to the system, please also consider the needs of your graduate and undergraduate students, accreditation requirements, learning outcomes, and professional development.

4. How will you use the data I give you?

We will use the list of essential journals as one data point in the retention and cancellation decision-making process. Department representatives will also be compiling a departmentally ranked list of essential and helpful journals that will provide us with additional guidance.

There are many considerations that have to be made when deciding on which journals to cancel and which to retain. We hope to be able to provide access to many of the journals listed as essential. However, we know we will not be able to accommodate all needs. For cancelled titles, we are committed to doing our best to serve you through Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery.

5. Who can I contact if I have questions?

Please contact your subject librarian if you have any questions or concerns. Alternatively, you may read our longer FAQ or contact Rebecca Boughan, Electronic Resources and Licensing Specialist: rebecca.walton@byu.edu, (801) 422-3670.

Other questions →