Across the country, research libraries are faced with difficult decisions that will impact their campuses’ access to scholarly research articles found in subscription databases and journals. While many academic library budgets have remained stagnant, publishers have consistently raised their subscription fees 5 to 7 percent each year and larger publishers have priced their subscriptions beyond what is sustainable for universities to maintain. Even large research universities like UC Berkeley and others have had to walk away from subscription access to research materials managed by large publishers like Elsevier.
Texas State University has also been hit hard by these rising costs and we have reached a point where our researchers may begin to feel some pain as early as January. Publishing giant Elsevier is our largest scholarly journal subscription with access to more than 2,000 journal titles in ScienceDirect. With a market share of 19 percent of the world’s peer-reviewed journal articles, a profit margin of 37.2 percent and revenues of $3.4 billion (2019), Elsevier’s subscription fees are nearly 28 percent higher than they were five years ago and are at a level that we cannot continue to pay after our current license agreement expires in December.
This is a condition shared by many institutions across our state. Last year, we joined the Texas Library Coalition for United Action (Texas Coalition). This group was formed to work with Elsevier to identify a workable solution for the coalition’s institutions. Our negotiating power brings together 43 Texas institutions including our Texas State system schools, the University of Texas system, Texas A&M’s system, Baylor University, the Texas Tech University system, Rice University, the University of North Texas and others. Coalition institutions spend more than $25 million on Elsevier subscriptions annually and our researchers contributed about 6 percent of the Elsevier’s U.S. research. It is our hope that this will put us in a better bargaining position to negotiate more sustainable pricing, improved access to scholarship, and greater control over faculty content. Although we are early in the negotiations, to date, we have not been able to make headway. It is possible that we will lose access to the comprehensive bundle of ScienceDirect journals after December.
A task force of Texas State’s library staff is identifying alternate ways that our researchers can access journal content. A team is currently reviewing and identifying open access finding tools and pay-per-view options to add to our discovery systems. In addition, the library is investigating ways to expedite its interlibrary loan and ways to offer document delivery services to help scholars access the articles needed for their research. Our aim is to have systems in place that minimize the impact of the loss of the Elsevier subscription. We are also creating informative web pages that will provide Texas State researchers with information about the impact of our situation and links to alternative access resources.
University Libraries remains committed to both open access of research materials and faculty control over their published works. As a member of the Texas Coalition steering committee, I will diligently fight for the access needed by our researchers and reasonable pricing for journal and database subscriptions. Faculty at Texas State can expect to receive additional information about our efforts before the end of the year and are encouraged to reach out to their subject librarians with questions or concerns.
Update 3.2.2021 – Negotiations between the Texas Coalition and Elsevier are ongoing. Texas State University campus access to the Elsevier journals has been extended through at least March 14.
This article was contributed by Associate Vice President and University Librarian Joan Heath.