Cornell Faculty Senate Resolution
Cornell Faculty Senate Resolution
Resolution regarding the University Library’s Policies on
Serials Acquisitions,
with Special Reference to Negotiations with
Elsevier
Submitted by the
Faculty Library Advisory Board for consideration at the December
17,
2003 meeting of the University Faculty
Senate
BACKGROUND
A Crisis in the
Cost of Journals in the Sciences and Social Sciences
For
many years, increases in the prices of library materials have exceeded
increases in
library acquisitions budgets, at Cornell and abroad. One
significant reason is the
growing commercialization of scholarly
publishing, especially in the sciences and social
sciences and
especially where journals are concerned. Statistics from the Association
of
Research Libraries (http://www.arl.org/stats/arlstat/graphs/2001/2001t2.html)
show that over the fifteen years from 1986 to 2001 the prices of serials
generally increased by
215%, library expenditures on serials went up by
210%, and the number of serials titles
purchased by large academic
research libraries decreased by 5%. The Consumer Price
Index during the
same period increased by only 62%.
At Cornell, Ithaca campus
library budgets for materials increased by 149% during
approximately
the same period, but the number of serials titles purchased increased
by
only 5%—at a time when the number of serials published increased by
approximately
138%. The contract colleges subscribe to 14% fewer
serials than they did fifteen years
ago, even though their combined
library acquisitions budgets have increased by 117%
during that
period.
Commercial publishers charge more—sometimes many times
more—for their materials
than scholarly societies or university presses
do. The Dutch company Elsevier, which
publishes mainly science
journals, is the best example. Over the last decade Elsevier’s
price
increases have often been over 10% and occasionally over 20% on a year to
year
basis. (They have recently announced a policy of not raising
prices by more than 10% in
a given year.) In 2003 Cornell subscribed to
930 Elsevier titles at a cost of approximately
$1.7 million. Those 930
titles represent fewer than 2% of the total number of serials titles
to
which Cornell subscribes; the $1.7 million comprises something over 20% of
the
library’s total serials expenditures, including those of the
Medical School. Elsevier’s
proposed price increase of 6.5% for 2004
would have required an increase in the
library’s serials expenditures
of approximately $100,000. By contrast, the library’s total
materials
budget, including materials for the Medical School, has in fact decreased
by
1.4%. It is clear that increases of the magnitude that Elsevier
regularly expects have
become quite literally unbearable. The long-term
trends of which these particular
increases are a part are therefore
also unsustainable.
The Cornell
library’s relationship with Elsevier has given definition and urgency
to
problems the library has been facing for some time and that extend
beyond Elsevier to
include other commercial
publishers.
Elsevier’s pricing
practices
One way the library can accommodate increases in
serials prices that exceed increases
in the library’s budget is by
canceling some titles. Elsevier’s pricing practices, however,
make this
straightforward solution especially costly. In the past, Cornell has
contracted
with Elsevier for a package of journals and electronic
services. The contract has been
priced as a “bundle,” that is, in such
a way that, if the library cancels any of the Elsevier
journals it
currently subscribes to, the pricing of the other individual journals the
library
chooses to keep increases substantially. (The actual process is
somewhat more
complicated than this, but this is the end result.)
Because the prices of the journals that
are retained greatly increase
when others are cancelled, the only way to achieve any real
savings is
to cancel a great many journals.
In 2003 the library was able to
maintain its subscriptions to Elsevier journals only
because of
one-time assistance from an extra-budgetary source. Given that the
library
cannot bear Elsevier’s price increases for 2004, it has decided
that it must withdraw
from the bundled pricing plan that has
characterized past contracts and begin canceling
Elsevier journal
titles. The library, in consultation with affected faculty, has
identified
several hundred Elsevier journals for cancellation at the
end of 2003.
There are two clear benefits to this course of action:
it enables the library to retain the
most important Elsevier titles
without drastically impacting serials collections and the
library’s
ability to acquire non-Elsevier journals and non-serials materials, and it
frees
the library, in 2004 and in the future, from contractual
obligations that have in effect
compromised its ability to make
case-by-case judgments about the value to the
collection of particular
Elsevier journals.
Understandably, there is growing dissatisfaction
at universities in the United States
with Elsevier’s prices and pricing
practices and increasing militancy among university
librarians and
faculty with regard to modes of response. Cornell’s announced
intention
to withdraw from the standard contractual arrangements with
Elsevier for 2004 has
received substantial attention in the press.
Cornell is clearly perceived as assuming a
leadership role in these
matters. Moreover, the faculty at some other major universities
have
endorsed or are considering endorsing resolutions designed to address, in
varying
ways, this same set of issues.
(For more information,
see the web page the library has set up to explain these issues:
http://www.library.cornell.edu/scholarlycomm/problem.html)
BE IT
RESOLVED THAT:
(1) The University Faculty
Senate supports the library’s efforts to maintain and enhance
the
outstanding quality of Cornell’s library collections for teaching and
research.
Moreover, recognizing the special challenges presented by
current economic, market,
and budgetary conditions, the University
Faculty Senate supports the library’s efforts to
bring serials costs
under control while at the same time maintaining the
collection’s
quality.
(2) Recognizing that
given present and future budget constraints, the library
requires
autonomy and flexibility to manage its materials acquisitions
decisions effectively, the
University Faculty Senate endorses the
library’s decision to withdraw from Elsevier’s
bundled pricing plan and
undertake selective cancellation of Elsevier journals as
deemed
appropriate by the library in consultation with the
faculty.
(3) Recognizing that current trends
regarding serials costs are unsustainable and that
the current business
models and marketing strategies of commercial publishers
bear
significant responsibility for those trends, the University
Faculty Senate encourages the
library to take an aggressive approach in
negotiating new contractual models and
pricing structures with Elsevier
and other commercial publishers designed to bring
serials costs in line
with realistic long-term library budget
projections.
(4) Recognizing that the cost of
Elsevier journals in particular is radically out of
proportion with the
importance of those journals to the library’s serials
collection
(measured both in terms of the proportion of the total
collection they represent and in
terms of their use by and value to
faculty and students), the University Faculty Senate
encourages the
library to seek in the near term, in consultation with the faculty,
to
reduce its expenditures on Elsevier journals to no more than 15% of
its total annual
serials acquisitions expenditures (from in excess of
20% in 2003). Moreover, the
University Faculty Senate encourages the
library to work toward long-term pricing
structures with Elsevier and
other publishers based on reasonable measures of a
subscription’s
importance to the Cornell collection.
(5)
Recognizing that the increasing control by large commercial publishers
over the
publication and distribution of the faculty’s scholarship and
research threatens to
undermine core academic values promoting broad
and rapid dissemination of new
knowledge and unrestricted access to the
results of scholarship and research, the
University Faculty Senate
encourages the library and the faculty vigorously to explore
and
support alternatives to commercial venues for scholarly
communication.
Cornell University Library | CUInfo | Page last updated 12/18/03