Journal Cancellations - 2011/2012
Why is the Library cancelling journals?
Alongside the rest of the Trust the Library has to make significant savings in the next financial year. We have looked to reduce our costs across the board, but as journals account for our greatest expenditure it was unavoidable that cuts had to be made here too. For 2012 we have to reduce our journals subscriptions by approximately £18,000, almost a quarter of our journals budget.
What criteria have we used?
In order to try to minimise the impact we looked closely at our journal subscriptions and decided, wherever possible, not to renew titles which are available to members via other online collections, enabling us to retain titles that don't have any alternative access. The drawback to this is that the majority of publishers place an embargo of up to a year on journal content that is licensed to online collections, delaying access to the current issues - this means for example that an article published in January 2012 would not appear in the online collection until January 2013. However in the majority of cases the usage statistics for the cancelled titles are very low, suggesting that losing the current year is a sacrifice worth making if it allows us to keep other journals that we would otherwise lose altogether.
In addition to this we have also had to cancel a few titles whose use over the past few years has been so low that we cannot justify the subscription.
Wherever possible we have consulted with key staff to help us make these very difficult decisions, and we are very grateful for the the advice and support that they have given us.
Will there still be any access to the cancelled titles?
Although a journal may have been cancelled this year, it doesn't mean that it is lost to us forever.
In most cases they will be accessible in the following ways:
- continued online access to the previous years that we have subscribed to via publisher's site
- many titles are available via our online collections (eg Psychology & Behavioral Sciences Collection, CINAHL, PsycArticles)
- print copies received up to December 2011 will be available in the Library
Please check the One-Stop-Shop for Journals for availablility
FREE Inter-Library Loans for articles from cancelled titles!
For the first year of cancellation, any library member who needs to access articles published in 2012 can request them without charge (normal copyright conditions apply).
Check Tapsnaps - Journal Watch for latest issues and ordering information.
You can see a complete list of journals cancelled at the end of 2011 here