Access to Scholarly Journals

Published by CSU Long Beach, Office of the Provost, January 28, 2015

After extensive negotiations over several months, the Council of CSU Library Deans (COLD) unanimously decided against renewing its contract with vendor John Wiley and Sons for a package of 1,300 journals due to significant price increases.

Wiley and Sons had announced a 10-12% price increase on the approximately $2-million contract with the CSU.

The impact of this decision, which is effective February 1, will be significantly mitigated for most CSULB faculty and students for these reasons:

• BeachReach, our rapid interlibrary loan service, will supply the remaining Wiley content electronically, usually within 24 to 48 hours.
• The Wiley titles represent less than 2% of the Library’s 78,000 journal titles.
• Two-thirds of the 1,300 journals have limited circulation.
• The University Library will retain subscriptions to 48 high-use Wiley journals, and access to most pre-2015 content for the other Wiley journals.
• Several Wiley journals are available in Library databases.

The remaining 77,000-plus journal titles that CSULB subscribes to are unaffected by this decision.

While this is a first for our sister campuses, it is not a first for CSULB. In 2012, CSULB was the sole CSU campus to make this same decision against Wiley for the same reason, and there was little disruption of access. For 2016, the Chancellor’s Office and COLD are working on a Wiley proposal we think will better meet the needs of our campuses.

This decision was not made lightly, and follows years of spiraling costs for journal subscriptions. The CSU campuses are in an excellent position to insist on reasonable and fair pricing and a voice in content selection. If not, every year CSU’s libraries will continue to reduce collection strength in order to meet the next price hike. Other library systems such as the University of California and Harvard have pushed back with other publishers, with good results. In the short and long run, the Wiley cancellation decision, difficult as it may be, is necessary stewardship.

More information on the CSU decision and the full official COLD statement is available online.

Please feel free to share your questions and concerns about the Wiley cancellation decision. Contact Carol Perruso, Library Collections Officer at Carol.Perruso@csulb.edu, or Tracey Mayfield, Library Associate Dean at Tracey.Mayfield@csulb.edu.