Journal Retention Survey

Journal Survey

[posted April 20, 2015]

The Memorial University Libraries are fortunate to have avoided significant cancellations of online journal subscriptions during the last ten years. However, it is no longer possible to maintain the balance between the demands for the information resources required for research and teaching, and ongoing publication price increases and currency exchange losses resulting from a weakened Canadian dollar.

Steps were taken in 2014-2015 to mitigate the impact, but like all Canadian research libraries, we are now confronted with the difficult task of potentially discontinuing subscriptions in 2016 to a number of online journals.  Your input is needed to ensure that the impact on your research and teaching is minimized.

Collections librarians bring their expertise, time and energy to the process of considering research support and the curricular needs of our user communities. They have examined usage statistics, uniqueness of journal titles, the degree of overlap with other resources, alternative resources, and other cost-saving measures that have allowed us to avoid cancellations over recent years. A major component of the proposed strategy to reduce expenditure involves cancelling four large publisher journal packages and subscribing only to a smaller number of indispensable titles from these same sources.  The packages under consideration for cancellation are: Cambridge Journals Online, Oxford Journals Online, SpringerLink, and the Wiley Online Library.  A list of all the journal titles in these packages is provided for your review.

Your input is needed regarding which journals from the packages listed and more generally should be retained. We would appreciate your response to our survey, which asks for your overall top scholarly resources for research and teaching, By combining your advice and feedback with our statistics on usage patterns, we will identify required titles and continue to subscribe to as many as our resources allow.  We will provide access, as we have in the past, to less used journals through our document delivery service.

Please respond to the survey to provide your vital input by June 1, 2015.

Ongoing communications will be shared on our website and through your collections librarians as we move through this process.  Thank you for your participation.