Some time ago I promised to keep everyone up to date with the results of the
short survey I did to members of this list (apologies for cross postings)
concerning the costs of e-journal admin. Somwehat belatedly I have now
written this up to share with the list.

The results are interesting even with the small sample involved (some 11
people responded in all), because it was clear that this subject does arouse
some fairly strong passions. Many of the responses were quite long so I have
summarised the response for the list.

1. Have your costs for e-Journal admin risen over the last year & roughly by
how much?
Response varied from 'becoming increasingly costly' to 'maybe as much a UK
pounds 40,000 per year in total. Measureing the increase in costs was
difficult but all respondents seemed to think that costs of admin were
rising.

2. Do you see this increasing/decreasing over the next year?
Only one rerspondent thought that costs might decrease in the future 'due to
reducing time spent on print' but this was expressed as a hope not reality
so far. All other respondents expected costs to increase.

3. In which areas does your agent help most/least currently?
Agents were seen as helping most with identifying free with print titles,
payment consolidation, information on prices and the licensing and
purchasing of individual e-journal titles.

4. If there were additional resources available from your agent where these
would be best targeted?
This was a big list! It basically came down to the following desires:

More information -- what is available, changes to journals and their
licenses and how to acquire and access the journals, information on
registration etc.

Systems - systems to organize e-journal negotiating, licensing, registering
and activation of journals and to get the information onto library systems.

Publisher relations. Putting pressure on publishers to allow vendors to be
true mediators in developing a standard generic licence acceptable to most
users.

And it was also especially pleasing to note one respondent who said 'Lack of
grace periods starting to improve - thanks!' (The ASA and many agents have
been running a campaign to persuade publishers to grace the first few issues
of their electronic titles and it looks as if many publishers have responded
positively.)

Other Comments
One respondent felt agents speed of response and service issues could be
much improved. Against this were many comments saying that it would be
impossible to cope without agents.

There were several comments saying that having to deal directly with
publishers rather than through agents increases the admin time spent and
cost of raising many rather than a few cheques. One respondent stated 'Why
should we (libraries) be forced to go direct if it does not suit us?'

One was of the opinion that since e-journals in publisher packages are
themselves an admin cost saving because processes dozens/hundreds of
journals with one transaction. Individual e-journal purchasing is extremely
costly.

Notification of activation of the e-subscription was noted as a problem with
both publishers and agents.

One indicated that if there was a financial inducement to move in favour of
dealing directly with publishers compared to an agent then they would do so
but was currently resisting this.

And one pointed out that smaller publishers subscriptions have sometimes
been cancelled in favour of Big Deals and this librarian would prefer to
move away from such deals.


I hope this is of some interest to everyone, it was certainly of
considerable interst to me and I would like to thank you all for responding.
This is a subject that will doubtless continue to be important to us all and
I would be interested in continuing to hear the Lists' opinions on these
issues..In the meantime the ASA will be holding a conference on Bulk
Purchasing which may be of some interest to list members. Details on
www.subscription-agents.org. Final programme and registration info available
soon.

Many thanks

Rollo