British Library Group Develops Cost-Benefit Tool to Analyze Journal Pricing

July 29, 2011, 1:40 pm

As libraries rethink so-called Big Deals with publishers and take a hard look at what journals cost, they have to make tough decisions about what’s really worth their money. A new, customizable tool developed by the Research Libraries UK group seeks to help libraries make the best cost-benefit analysis they can based on usage statistics and pricing information. The group has taken a public stand against the high cost of some Big Deals.

The new tool “allows members to carefully analyze the value-for-money of publisher packages and to determine whether there would be cost savings to be made from moving back to title-by-title purchasing,” the library group said in an announcement. “The model allows each member to combine pricing information with the usage their community makes of the relevant journals. The library can then alter the combination of title-by-title subscriptions and document delivery options and compare the costs of these combinations to the cost of the Big Deals.”

David C. Prosser, the group’s executive director, described the subscription-analysis tool as a souped-up Excel spreadsheet that allows individual libraries to enter their own data sets. They can tailor the analysis to take into account such factors as how much money they want to save and whether they want to retain specific journals that may be little used but important to their patrons.

Combining the data in different ways “begins to give the libraries some idea of what they might do if the figures show it might be cost effective to move away from a Big Deal,” Mr. Prosser said. In some cases, the analysis may show that a Big Deal is still the best deal, he added. But Mr. Prosser thinks the tool has potential beyond helping libraries save money. It could give them a way to manage their collections better.

The library group also wants to see if it can detect broader trends among research libraries. It has asked all of its members to run an analysis of deals with a handful of publishers—Mr. Prosser wouldn’t say which ones—and then share the results centrally. “We’re going to going to try and see if we can reach any conclusions about patterns,” Mr. Prosser said. “We are going to try to tease out some conclusions about what’s happening nationally by bringing together all of the results for a small number of publishers.”

The tool was developed at Imperial College London and road-tested by librarians at the universities of Cambridge, Liverpool, and Manchester, according to Mr. Prosser. The eventual goal is to share it with nonmember libraries as well.

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http://micahvandegrift.wordpress.com Micah Vandegrift

This could join the ROAR and DOAJ as an essential resource for those of us working on developing open access initiatives. I will be doing a small scale version of this for a report I am compiling to present to the Faculty Senate at Florida State, and I look forward to when the tool is opened up to others.
mbelvadi

Since most librarians don’t have strong math backgrounds, any tools that can help them conduct this kind of analysis is a good thing, and I hope the group opens it to North American users soon.
While I’m not a fan of Big Deals generally, some institutions will have much more of a “long tail” pattern in their journal usage than others which is one of the chief benefits of such packages.

The quality of an institution’s interlibrary loan service is also a factor – some libraries using the latest technologies in ILL can routinely get articles in 24 hours or less except at peak times of the semester. ILL service can serve that long tail demand enough to reduce the value of the Big Deals.

Canada has an enormous advantage over the US in this regard, as it is not subject to the overly restrictive “5 in 5″ rule that most US libraries believe that they have to follow (although it is not actually in US law). The “5 in 5″ rule is actually pretty ridiculous since it makes no allowances for different size/type of institutions – a tiny liberal arts college and UC Berkeley have the same absolute limits per journal per year. (“5 in 5″ says that any single institution within any one calendar year cannot ILL more than 5 articles from the most recent 5 years of any particular journal title for “free” – with the 6th, they have to start paying copyright royalties per article).
jffoster

? So we shut down the Grades 13 and 14 of High School euphemistically known as Community “Colleges” , thus leaving only the four year baccalaureate granting real colleges (and the relatively few real Junior Colleges that aren’t Community Colleges) ?
cmorton001

I think Mr. Kahlenberg’s remarks bring to light a more salient point – articulation between elementary/secondary and post-secondary education. There is gracious little communication being done between these two giant enterprises. Yet they are so dependent upon one another.

Our country needs to concentrate on getting a cohort of students from one type of education to the next and then on to the job market. If we would focus on the needs of our country’s business and industry instead of perpetuating our own stale forms of education we might be able to tackle the socioeconomic problem so ably described here. I am not convinced a dismantling of the community college system is the answer. I believe the answer is getting the three groups mentioned here at the table and deciding together how best to educate our students and move toward that goal.
http://www.facebook.com/ordalyn.brown Ordalyn Brown

58 years ago the Board of Education took a stand recognizing that separate schools for blacks & whites were unfair. Read more and comment if you like the link……
http://www.facebook.com/ordalyn.brown Ordalyn Brown

Praise be to God on how far we’ve come. Thanks to the Board of Education for taking a stand.
alila5

Although one shouldn’t make fact-checking any more lax when it conforms to an opinion, and that is, of course, a problem and needs to be addressed, there’s still quite a bit of ground to cover between lazy fact checking and outright and intentional untruths.

I’m not trying to defend the NY Times, but let’s avoid hyperbole here. I’m still not sure why they haven’t had to change the name to Fox Opinion yet.

(Sticking a book on climate change in the snow and mocking it isn’t lazy fact checking, it’s a lie, and I’m sure they’ve been notified bountifully that climate and weather are different things. It is another LIE to continually repeat that “in fact” temperatures have lowered in recent yeas, etc, etc.)
ffidura

Before learning something about statistics, perhaps it would be helpful for the New York Times to learn something about journalism — or at least objective journalism.
11119787

It does seem that it has become fashionable to attack higher education in general. Perhaps it’s another manifestation of anti-intellectualism in America.
mkant69

The 94% figure is actually the percentage of Bachelor’s degree recipients graduating with debt who still owe on their loans a year later, not the percentage who still owed money when they graduated. After being alerted to the article with the 94% figure on Sunday by a Chronicle of Higher Education reporter, I worked with the New York Times reporters to identify the nature of the error. It took several days for the US Department of Education to confirm that my diagnosis was accurate. The gist of the error was based on the B1OWAMT1 variable from the B&B survey. This variable has 61.8% non-zero, 3.8% zero and 34.4% missing. The reporters assumed that the 34.4% missing were nonrespondents when in fact they were the 34.4% from the B1BORAT variable who graduated with no debt. The reporters effectively calculated 61.8% / (61.8% + 3.8%) = 94.2%. The correct figure is the 65.6% from the B1BORAT variable.
mkt42

Bravo, the NYTimes needs to be held to the fire, not just for their statistical blunder but for their sensationalistic focus on a few ultra-high debt graduates who are not representative of most college students. Blunder is the right word to use.
budlevin

people make mistakes. that includes both reporters and scientists. that’s why in science we have peer review and a preference for independent replication. newspapers don’t have the resources to call upon that science does. many of them are struggling to stay afloat.

as far as impact, would the general public or politicians care whether the number were 65 or 94? would it make any difference in the underlying discussion? i doubt it. the discussion is not driven solely or even primarily by evidence.
bhay9341

Gee, now I understand everything.
jimkraai

Thanks for pointing out this error but so much more could be said. Having been a CFO for over 20 years, I have personally observed numerous students purchasing cars, phones, etc. taking spring break or study aboard trips. Students use as much aid as is available and never return any excess!
Also, this type of reporting is not unique to higher education, but might be more prevalent in the business section where many articles distort the underlying issues.
11218013

Just another example of the innumeracy endemic among members of the fourth estate. My favorite example: a story about some disease shared by 6% of men and 7% of women with the headline “13% of population afflicted by…”. Are journalism students required to pass a math course?
richardtaborgreene

Articles that seek out the most extreme examples of X without admitting that they did so, are dishonest. The low quality of the New York TImes is evident in this and 10,000 other similar articles this past year. Unfortunately for us all, the alternative sources and newspapers out there, are far far far worse. Humanity as a whole is rather disgusting in this and myriad other ways. That is one reason cats and dogs are so soothing—masters of indifference and masters of reciprocity respectively, something no newspaper can attain.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1600660751 Robert Oscar Lopez

I read both the New York Times and the Fox News website. Both make mistakes and both present a range of viewpoints. Fox News has opinion shows like Hannity, but New York Times has an opinion editorial page that features Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman.

Recently the New York Times reported a poll showing Romney leading Obama by 2 percentage points, while Fox reported a poll showing Obama leading Romney by 9 points.

Your mockery of Fox News is actually quite ill informed.
11290894

Indeed, what a pity if the NY Times is going to seed…let’s hope not, but this story was scary along those lines.
KristenFranks

Everyone is missing the point, there is a serious student loan debt crisis brewing, and what is going to happen to the economy when that student debt bubble bursts?

And what is going to happen to our national security, when so many people are in debt, and they can’t get a job due to the debt on their credit report, then they will have nothing to lose, and will care even less when they take what you have, because they no longer care about what happens to them.

I want to know how much the original amounts of the student loans are, minus the interest. Then I want to know how much of the 1 Trillion dollars is profit for banks, politicians, and our government.

And if no ones knows that previously mentioned question, why not?

Maybe we all should be calling our governmental representative and ask the important questions: Gov Representatives Address and Phone Directory: http://studentloandebacle.blogspot.com/
http://bonalibro.us Bonalibro

People who watch FOX News are actually more uniformed than those who don’t watch the news at all. The New York Times once had Judith Miller, to its discredit, and its editorial page has Tom Friedman, David Brooks and Ross Douthat, in addition to Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman, so it publishes a range of opinions, not just Liberal opinions. Can FOX News say the same? No it cannot. It is simply the propaganda arm of the Plutocracy and the GOP.

It’s your boosterism of FOX News that is actually ill-informed.
http://bonalibro.us Bonalibro

My goodness, look at all the troglodytes piling on the NYT over a calculation error and missing the larger point, as usual. “Get a job and pay your debts” is all you have to offer? With 20% unemployment, your comments add nothing to the conversation.

The problem is that these young people have a mountain of debt that they can’t pay off because because you stupid market fundamentalists sent all the jobs overseas, and inflated a credit bubble to keep the economy rolling. The bubble popped, and now you blame those who were forced to borrow the money because you cut back on Pell Grants and government loan programs so the banksters could make more money. Chickens coming home to roost. I look forward to the day when the bottom falls out from under you, too, and your hated government rescuers decide to make Lehman’s out of you.