Plan to transition to electronic-only for most scholarly journals

The changing environment of scholarly journals and scholarship requires the Library to continuously assess the collection in terms of the balance between electronic and print formats, the physical condition of the collection, and the space needs at both the Eisenhower Library and the Libraries Service Center (LSC).

To proactively address these challenges, the Sheridan Libraries Collection Management Council (CMC) is implementing the plan below. This plan represents the first of three plans that were presented to the Library Advisory Council to address the changing environment of the Library's collection. The additional plans will be implemented at a future date.

Plan

The Library will transition to an electronic-only format for most scholarly journals based on faculty and librarian conversations and the research and teaching needs of faculty and students.

Criteria for Exception

• Special academic interest by faculty or librarian
• The title is primarily used for browsing
• The title is not adequately indexed
• The titles is part of national or regional collection agreements
• The license agreement is excessively restrictive
• We have strong concerns about the commitment from the publisher for long-term archiving, preservation, and access

Influencing Factors

There are a number of factors that have contributed to the development of this plan. We are faced with the realities of changing patron research habits, decreased buying power, and limited space. Research libraries around the world are facing similar challenges and making similar choices. Our goal is to develop strategies that best serve the JHU community without compromising the library's commitment to access and preservation of materials for scholars.

Questions

For more information on this plan, faculty and students should contact their departmental librarian or Liz Mengel Head, Collection Management.

FAQ

Q: Is this a pilot program?

A:  It is not a pilot but it will be implemented in stages. A proposal of this plan was presented to the Library Advisory Council who recommended moving forward with the faculty discussions and not holding formal focus groups.

Q:  What is the timeline for implementation?

A:  Our first round of titles for evaluation will be titles that are in Portico. While these are primarily science and engineering titles there are also a number of social science and humanities titles in the first round.  The science and engineering librarians have already been moving to electronic-only on a number of publishers over the past several years. After completing the Portico titles, we will then determine the next round of titles to evaluate.  The first round of titles needs to be identified by mid-May to be part of the FY08 print renewal process.

Q:  What is Portico?

A:  Portico was developed to respond to the growing need for focused long-term preservation of scholarly journals. Building on JSTOR’s Electronic Archiving Initiative funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, Portico was launched in 2005 with additional support from JSTOR, Ithaka, Library of Congress, and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Its mission is to preserve scholarly literature published in electronic form and to ensure that these materials remain accessible to future scholars, researchers, and students. Portico’s responsibility is to maintain and migrate the digital files as needed for future use. Portico also provides a reliable means to secure perpetual access, if participating publishers choose to designate Portico as a provider of post-cancellation access.

Q:  How does Portico work?

A:  Publishers and libraries pay to support Portico. Publishers send Portico their digital files. Access to archived content is granted to libraries supporting Portico when specific conditions are met that cause titles to no longer be available from the publisher or any other source. These are called trigger events.

Q:  What are the Portico trigger events?

A:  There are four trigger events that would allow libraries access to Portico files.

1. A publisher stops operations
2. A publisher ceases to publish a title
3. A publisher no longer offers back issues
4. Catastrophic and sustained failure of a publisher’s delivery platform

Q:  How will we determine print cancellation?

A:  Print cancellation will be determined on a title-by-title basis in consultation with our user community.  There will be no wholesale cancellation of titles, but instead titles will be evaluated to see if they meet the criteria to move to an electronic-only format. 

Q.  Will we also cancel low use titles?

A.  The plan at this point is to cancel print journals where we have or can get electronic equivalents.  Low use print or electronic titles can be identified and canceled if need be during the normal assessment and renewal process.

Q:  What do we mean by scholarly?

A:  Scholarly journals are titles that are most commonly (but not exclusively) published by university presses, peer-reviewed and are based on original research. Generally, they are published monthly, quarterly, or on some other non-weekly time schedule.  Typically, scholarly journals do not have ads and are not heavily illustrated (with notable exceptions such as certain art history, earth sciences, optics, some engineering titles, etc.).

Q: Will this apply to any monographic series such as protocols, or annuals which may have an ISSN?

A: The criteria for a librarian to consider moving to electronic-only remain the same no matter if the resource is a monthly publication or annual. The criteria are that the electronic format is an equivalent of the print, the electronic format is reliable, and there is long-term commitment to maintain the electronic format. The criteria for moving a resource to electronic only is valid if the resource comes in monthly, bimonthly, or annually. The move to electronic only access depends more on user input, the quality of resource, the reliability of the platform that it is delivered on, and the publishers commitment to long-term access to the digital than to how often the resource is published. We have already moved to electronic only for Annual Reviews and IEEE conference proceedings, which are annuals.

Q:  How will this affect my research?

A:  Given that you will have access to an electronic journal 24/7 and you are not constrained by the operating hours of the library to get the journal articles you need, we do not anticipate any changes to your research. However, it is important that we work with faculty on this process. If a title identified as a candidate for electronic-only is not an equivalent of the print, is used primarily for browsing, or has significant importance to the university it would not be a candidate for electronic-only format.

Q:  What do we mean by reliable electronic format?

A:  At the most basic level, reliable electronic format means that the vendor or publisher is trusted. It also means:

• The electronic issue is equivalent to the print issue
• The title is not embargoed for any time period or has a “moving wall,” e.g., we only get the latest one or two years online
• There is a reasonable certainty that the publisher will continue to be in business for the foreseeable future
• There are not constant or serious service interruptions
• The product works reasonably well with proxy servers
• The electronic journal supports printer friendly formats (PDF or other)
• Journals printed in color should provide high quality images for the electronic version
• Online content is available before or at the same time as the print
• Publisher holds appropriate rights for permanent online display
• License provides permanent access to the content purchased
• Institutional site license by IP authentication
• Durable URLs are used for individual e journal titles
• Publisher provides COUNTER compliant or equivalent use statistics

Updated 3/2007