WSU Libraries Plan Substantial Subscriptions, Collections Reductions This Year

To balance WSU Libraries’ collections budget this coming fiscal year, subscriptions and other collections purchases will be significantly reduced due to flat budgets and continued price inflation charged by scholarly publishers. The libraries anticipate reductions of more than $700,000, with further cuts in the coming years.

Trevor Bond

“We do not like cancelling journals and databases, and we recognize the challenges these reductions place on the WSU community for their research and teaching,” said Interim Dean Trevor Bond. “Over the last decade, we have eliminated individual journal subscriptions when possible. However, in this round, we must consider larger journal packages to balance our budget.”

For each of the proposed package cancellations, the libraries will selectively resubscribe to highly used and cited individual journal titles, generally those with 250 or more downloads per month. The packages under consideration for cancellation are:

  1. Wiley: These cancellations will result in approximately $213,000 in savings. However, the libraries will also lose their read-and-publish agreement, which over the previous three years has saved WSU faculty over $1,389,000 in article processing charges (APCs) for publishing their research open access.
  2. Springer Nature: By eliminating the Springer Nature Link portion of the package, the libraries will save $312,206.
  3. BioONE: Cancellation of this package will save $22,230. The libraries cannot resubscribe to individual titles in this collection.
  4. Project Muse: The libraries would retain only four journals in this package, saving $32,404. Most of the well-used titles in Project Muse are covered in JSTOR after an embargo.
  5. American Institute of Physics: Cancelling all titles in this collection, except those with more than 250 monthly uses, will save $19,470.
  6. Nexus Uni: Cancelling will save $62,563. Although many of the materials will be available by interlibrary loan, discovering the information will be more challenging with the loss of the database’s search functions.
  7. Lecture Notes in Computer Science: This cancellation will save $42,968.
  8. ICPSR (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research): Cancelling membership in this consortium of more than 810 academic institutions and research organizations will save $22,000.
  9. Gideon: This reduction will save $10,828.

The size of these reductions meant that the libraries had to consider expensive packages. Bond, Head of Collection Development Joel Cummings, and others created the proposed list of cancellations by examining several sources of information, including, but not limited to:

  • WSU’s online usage data (the primary factor in decision making)
  • Price and inflation patterns for individual titles
  • Data regarding WSU authors’ citation or publishing in individual titles
  • Journal citation reports data
  • Past faculty input

Please download the lists of titles from these packages being considered for cancellation. For packages where the libraries intend to cancel some titles and retain others, two separate files are provided, a tentative cancellation list and a retention list (titles that will be resubscribed to individually).

Joel Cummings

“It is important to note that there may be online access for some of the titles being cut via packages we continue to license,” Cummings said. “Alternative holdings, if any, are shown in the lists. In some cases, we will simply lose all access except through interlibrary loan.”

The libraries are asking for input on the proposed title cancellations, and if faculty have benefited from the waived APCs in the Wiley package. The linked spreadsheet lists the titles alphabetically. Please provide feedback here or contact Cummings or Bond with your questions and comments. They will consider feedback and options through June and aim to finalize cancellations this summer, after budget allocations are clearer. The libraries’ main vendor requires notification of changes to their subscriptions by early September.

“Faculty input is a vital part of these decisions; however, we need to make these reductions, and if we remove a title or package from the list, another will have to take its place,” Bond said. “We prepared these reductions during the fall 2024 semester, anticipating a flat budget for the coming fiscal year. We may need to make deeper reductions based on the state budget forecast and federal funding issues.”

In positive news, the libraries recently joined the Dryad consortium to provide help with federally mandated data management and preservation needs. The ScienceDirect renewal includes waived APCs to WSU researchers in more than 1,800 Elsevier journals the libraries subscribe to. Finally, with support from Provost T. Chris Riley-Tillman, the libraries are piloting an open access fund to help pay up to $1,000 in APCs for qualifying publications.

If you would like to support the WSU Libraries, please consider adding a payroll deduction or donating to the Library Excellence Fund. This fiscal year, the libraries will utilize $125,000 in donated funds to purchase monographs.