For this year only Elsevier is allowing us to reduce our subscribed title list by around 4.5% (a savings of about $51,000) and to realign our subscribed title list.

A bit of history and background about the Elsevier agreement:

The University of Notre Dame Libraries, as part of the NorthEast Research Libraries (NERL) consortium, has a license agreement with Elsevier to provide electronic access to almost all of the 1,300 Elsevier journals whether or not Notre Dame has a subscription.  Moreover, Elsevier has agreed to limit the inflation rate to under 7.5% while Notre Dame has agreed to not cancel any Elsevier journal.

Notre Dame "subscribes" to about 400 Elsevier journals of which we have electronic access.  In addition, we have electronic access to about 850 "non-subscribed" Elsevier journals.

Without the agreement we would have a rolling 5 year back-file with for our subscribed titles.  With the agreement we have a back-file for both groups of titles beginning in 1996 to the present.  It is my understanding that for the subscribed group the back-file is ours to keep.  It was a purchase not a lease.

If we ever decide to opt out of the agreement, then Elsevier would charge us list price for the journals plus an electronic access fee of 15% for the subscribed titles.  In addition, we would not have electronic access to any of the non-subscribed titles or their back-file years.

How does this project effect me?

This project will have no impact on your access to the Elsevier journal literature.  This project will not effect your access to any Elsevier journal as long as we stay with the agreement.

Any impact would be felt if we ever decided to leave the Elsevier agreement.  The impact would be losing electronic access to current issues of non-subscribed titles as well as losing electronic access to the back-file (1995 - present) for the non-subscribed titles.

N.B.  Based on usage the library purchased the deep-back-file (1939-1994) for Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Elsevier titles.  We own this data and access to it is not determined by staying with the agreement.

Project details:

The primary criteria the library is using to determine what titles to "keep" and what titles to "not keep" is use.  Specifically, it is the cost per download figure we are using.

The break-even point for document delivery vs ownership is about $40 per download.  For any title greater than $40 per download it is more cost effective to rely on commercial document delivery than it is to subscribe.  Likewise, for any title less than $40 per download it is more cost effective to subscribe than it is to rely on commercial document delivery.

A secondary criteria is to make sure we maintain titles that are part of any accreditation list for a department.

Another criteria is input from users about the titles that are critical for research and scholarship.  And any input about the titles needed to make the Chemistry-Physics Library a chemistry-physics library.

So based on the criteria listed above, I have reduced the subscribed title list by about 4.5%.  I am proposing to move the titles in Red from the subscribed list to the non-subscribed list.  See the charts for Chemistry or Physics.

In addition, I have realigned our subscribed titles list based on usage, specifically cost per download.  So I am proposing to move the titles in Green from the non-subscribed list to the subscribed list. See the charts for Chemistry or Physics.

On the chemistry list you will see two titles in Blue.  I am still waiting for pricing information for those two titles.

Conclusion:

Please give me any feedback by Noon Tuesday (March 16, 2005).

Sorry for the short notice.  The talks with Elsevier to allow us to do this project just recently concluded.

Thurston Miller
miller.115@nd.edu