How many medical journals does the Library receive?
While we boast that Duke Medicine has access to over 3,000 titles here is the truth.
We have paid subscriptions to only 1,200 of the journals we list on our e-journal page. That's all the our existing budget can afford. There are over 5,000 biomedical journals in Medline/PubMed alone. And while we do not need all of them, we have gone from a high of 2,800 journal subscriptions down to 1,200 over the past 10 years due to rising costs of electronic journals and budget cuts.
Fortunately the main campus library system (Perkins, Bostock and their branches) pay for another 1,400 titles that are health related or relevant to biomedical research. When our Library could not pick up the cost of some major journals collections, such as Nature, the main campus has stepped in and paid the annual contract fees. The Medical Center Library has tried to provide at least partial payment for these collections when the budget allows.
Main campus also pays for a number of general academic databases, such as Academic Premier, that have full-text journal articles. Due to prior budget cuts, we cancelled many of our subscriptions and now rely on those databases for electronic access to many biomedical journals.
What's the problem with relying on general databases for journals? Relying on databases of full-text articles can be dangerous. Publishers often decide to pull their journals out and then we lose access to the articles. Since we do not have the funding to replace them, we lose all access to those journals completely. Also libraries review databases all the time since they can change or better ones are available. If a decision is made to cancel a database, then all the full-text journals in that database can be lost.
What about free open access journals? There are a number of open access journals, but only a small portion is immediately and freely available to the public. Most highly ranked journals have 6 to 12 month embargoes or never make their journals freely available without a subscription. We do list the free medical journals on the e-journal page, but most are not considered top tier journals.
Yes, we could wait for 6 to 12 months for things to become free (and we have made those unpopular decisions several times). But can Duke clinicians and researchers really wait 6 to 12 months or longer to have access to cutting-edge information?
The reality is that the Library's journal collection is in trouble and will continue to be so as long as our budget remains flat and we have to make cuts to offset the yearly price increases. Decreases in our funding simply exacerbate an onging problem.
Certainly not a pretty picture, but the reality.
We have paid subscriptions to only 1,200 of the journals we list on our e-journal page. That's all the our existing budget can afford. There are over 5,000 biomedical journals in Medline/PubMed alone. And while we do not need all of them, we have gone from a high of 2,800 journal subscriptions down to 1,200 over the past 10 years due to rising costs of electronic journals and budget cuts.
Fortunately the main campus library system (Perkins, Bostock and their branches) pay for another 1,400 titles that are health related or relevant to biomedical research. When our Library could not pick up the cost of some major journals collections, such as Nature, the main campus has stepped in and paid the annual contract fees. The Medical Center Library has tried to provide at least partial payment for these collections when the budget allows.
Main campus also pays for a number of general academic databases, such as Academic Premier, that have full-text journal articles. Due to prior budget cuts, we cancelled many of our subscriptions and now rely on those databases for electronic access to many biomedical journals.
What's the problem with relying on general databases for journals? Relying on databases of full-text articles can be dangerous. Publishers often decide to pull their journals out and then we lose access to the articles. Since we do not have the funding to replace them, we lose all access to those journals completely. Also libraries review databases all the time since they can change or better ones are available. If a decision is made to cancel a database, then all the full-text journals in that database can be lost.
What about free open access journals? There are a number of open access journals, but only a small portion is immediately and freely available to the public. Most highly ranked journals have 6 to 12 month embargoes or never make their journals freely available without a subscription. We do list the free medical journals on the e-journal page, but most are not considered top tier journals.
Yes, we could wait for 6 to 12 months for things to become free (and we have made those unpopular decisions several times). But can Duke clinicians and researchers really wait 6 to 12 months or longer to have access to cutting-edge information?
The reality is that the Library's journal collection is in trouble and will continue to be so as long as our budget remains flat and we have to make cuts to offset the yearly price increases. Decreases in our funding simply exacerbate an onging problem.
Certainly not a pretty picture, but the reality.
posted by Pat at
3:41 PM
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