The University of Manitoba campuses are located on original lands of Anishinaabeg, Cree, Ojibwe-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples, and on the National Homeland of the Red River Métis. More
Academic journal subscriptions have risen 5-7% each year, in comparison to a 2% increase in the Consumer Price Index over the past decade.
The Libraries’ budget has not been reduced. We are trying to balance the difference between the budgeted amount and the increased cost of subscriptions. Due to the trajectory of subscription cost increases each year, $650,000 is the approximate required savings for this next budget year.
This will be part of the conversation faculty members have with their liaison librarians. Frequency of use is part of currently available statistics.
We are not alone. These subscription price increases are unsustainable for every academic library. Some libraries began this process several years ago. For example, the University of California recently walked away from negotiations with Elsevier and the University of Saskatchewan did not renew big deal subscriptions with Taylor & Francis and Wiley-Blackwell, effective 2020.
The Big Deal offers unlimited access to a publisher's entire collection for an annual fee, ensuring a steady revenue stream for publishers. However, Big Deals often package critical journals with less popular journals to justify a higher package price, forcing universities to pay for materials they do not necessarily need or want.
It is a very complicated process because of the Big Deals and the analysis that we want to do to make the best decisions. We are working on that now, but we wanted to give people advance information about what we are doing and to make sure that faculty members are aware of the project. We plan to have some conversations with the faculties about it, so watch for further communication in the Spring.
We have usage statistics on all our electronic and print resources so we know what is being used and not used. We will look at usage data in conjunction with the other criteria and decide on a method for determining what should not be renewed. We will share more information as it becomes available.
We have been talking about this issue in libraries for twenty years without a solution. It is complicated because scholarly communications are so closely tied to the promotion and tenure process; and those are often tied to wider disciplinary expectations. Therefore, the solution has to be with all members of the university working together. We would be happy to have further conversations about this in the future.
Theoretically, we could but our next biggest cost is our staff and locations and that is complicated, as you can imagine. And it would not be sustainable going forward. We are unable to do anything else at this time to quickly identify the savings for this fiscal year. The current subscription cost trajectory will continue into the future. If we continue to maintain our existing collection, we can project that in 2021-22 we would need to find between $700,000-$800,000, with continuing growing increases in the following years. We are dealing with the issue we have right now in 2020-21 and trying to ensure that UML has a sustainable collections plan into the future.
They are Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell, Springer, Taylor & Francis, and Sage. If you are publishing in a subscription journal published by one of these publishers, your options for making an article openly available are here: https://libguides.lib.umanitoba.ca/ld.php?content_id=34555389.
This only applies to articles funded by the Tri-Agencies, and not every country has a similar policy. There is also no audit mechanism in Canada to ensure compliance. So, not every funded article is available openly within a year. Those that are published in ethical open access journals are available, but the Libraries does not get a break in cost for those published in hybrid journals (in which some articles are open access and some accessed via subscription). For more information, see the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications.