san diego

A bold experiment in electronic use of scientific journals by the California State University (CSU) system has met mixed responses since its launch on 1 July.

CSU entered an 18-month contract with a secondary publisher (a subscription service that sells packages of journals to libraries, under licence to the publishers) for a ‘core’ set of electronic subscriptions, in a bid to improve access and cut costs. This was to include the journals most requested at two-thirds of campus libraries.

But the university, which offers mainly undergraduate and masters degrees, is getting far fewer journals than it wanted and the future of the project now looks uncertain.

The project, set up by a committee consisting solely of California State librarians, is widely seen as a radical move with little faculty input. A university spokesman said “The librarians know what the faculty are looking for”, and committee member John C. Calhoun, librarian at the Dominguez Hills campus, claimed it was not in the nature of librarians to engage in “radical moves to imperil scholarship”. But researchers and students are expected to clash with librarians over reduced availability of research material.

When proposals were requested last winter, university officials sought some 1,300 journals for the 21 libraries at the statewide system, which has 45,000 faculty members and about 350,000 students. Alabama-based EBSCO Information Services won the $500,000 contract. But the libraries will only receive about 500 ‘core journals’, as EBSCO could not persuade others — including many of the major names such as Nature, Science, Cell, Biochemistry and Geology— to join the agreement. Campus libraries will have to subscribe to these individually.

David Kerin, a general manager of EBSCO, said this had happened because the university “didn't want to spend more money, and certain publishers didn't want to play ball by California's criteria”.

CSU officials say the contract still represents a strong political statement, wresting control over the maintenance of academic journal collections from publishers and secondary publishers. These have forced many libraries to buy packages, including some journals they don't need and multiple copies of others when they only required one.

Evan A. Reader, director of CSU's electronic information services, said the contract was the first major step towards moving libraries to electronic publishing. The deal also secured some concessions, including perpetual use of articles the university has paid for (even if the subscription is later cancelled), unlimited interlibrary loans and occasional use by authorized members of the public at university libraries.

This contract is among a number of moves sweeping the research-publishing world as use of the Internet increases. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is proposing its own electronic publishing system to counter what it considers high costs to universities it funds. Stanford University and the British Medical Journal recently announced plans to publish electronic journals of non-peer-reviewed research (see box). And the University of California's Digital Library has just signed a long-term contract with Elsevier Science to provide most of the Dutch firm's 1,100 journals to its campuses through an electronic system, ScienceDirect.

While CSU's experiment is being monitored by institutions as far away as Japan, there are considerable obstacles to its success — in particular, the difficulties libraries face in securing the journals they want from publishers reluctant to change the rules. Elsevier has already declined to provide any through the California State contract. Elsevier spokesman John Tagler said the university system wanted only 27 Elsevier journals for its core group, whereas the university libraries had been subscribing to nearly 400.

In future, each CSU library must buy any extra journals from its own budget. This sets the stage for an inevitable fight over library expenditures. The core-journal contract was funded from a special state library allotment; when it ends university officials will have to determine new funding mechanisms. Meanwhile Calhoun expects libraries to begin the “time-consuming and anxious process” of deciding what print journals to cancel next year when renewals become due. He says there will be “advise and consent” with faculty during this transition.

At present, campuses remain wary. San Diego State University (SDSU), which has the system's largest and oldest library, won't consider dropping its 5,000 print subscriptions until the core-journal programme establishes a credible track record over a considerable period of time. “We are taking a wait-and-see approach,” says the library's interim dean Karen Kinney, adding that gaps in its collection would be costly and problematic to fill if it relied too much on the developing programme.