University of Virginia Eyes New Way to Purchase Scholarly Journals

From The Daily Progress:

When the University of California decided to walk away from negotiations with its journal publisher and push for more open-access publishing, research librarians in Virginia paid attention.

“We’re definitely vigorously exploring other options and models,” said John Unsworth, the University of Virginia’s dean of libraries.

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According to information provided by UVa, several large journal packages consume about 40% of the libraries’ collections budget. Elsevier, which offers the most expensive package, provided 3,354 journals in 2018 at a cost of $1.8 million, or 19% of the collections budget that year.

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Pair the financial crunch with a philosophical one, and Virginia librarians say they’re deeply skeptical of the current status quo.

Do we as universities, which produce that content to begin with, want to continue outsourcing that intellectual property to companies that sell it back to us, sometimes repackaged, and at a huge profit margin?” asked John Zenelis, dean of libraries and university librarian at George Mason University.

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See Also: Direct to UC/Elsevier Roundup

Filed under: Academic Libraries, Elsevier, Libraries, News, Open Access, Publishing, Roundup