This new report was released today by Primary Research. The full text is fee-based but a few highlights from the report are available online.

The report is based on a representative survey of more than 550 higher education faculty in the United States and Canada. Faculty present their opinions on preferences for print or paper journal formats, degree of problems with archival access, use of url-catalog links to journals, extent to which their college library journal collection satisfies their scholarly needs, and frequency of database access and library visits. Data is broken out by 12 criteria including age, academic field or specialty, type of college, size of college, frequency of library use, and many other factors.

Here are Just a Few Findings From the Report:

+ Canadian faculty were more likely than American faculty to think of the paper copies as a waste of time – nearly 45% thought so.

+ In general, age was highly inversely correlated with the tendency to think of paper copies as wasteful and redundant when online versions were available.

+ Only 13.86% of faculty at research universities prefer paper to online journal formats.

+ Only a third of community college faculty express support for increased spending on academic journals while about 64.3% of faculty in MA/Ph.D. granting colleges expressed such support.

See Also: The Survey of Academic & Research Library Journal Purchasing Practices

Here’s another related fee-based report from a related Primary Research report.

Some Findings:

+ The libraries in the sample acquired a mean of more than 46% of their journal subscriptions in bundles of more then 50 titles.

+ The libraries in sample canceled a mean of 53 journal titles in the past year.

+ Mean spending on print edition only subscriptions was $130,721, less than a sixth of total spending.

+ About a quarter of the libraries in the sample believe that open access has already slowed the increase in journal prices.

+ 15.56% of the libraries in the sample have paid a publication fee on behalf of an author from their institution.

+ For 42.22% of the libraries in the sample, all new subscriptions to journals include electronic access.

+ More than 64% of the libraries in the sample keep track of their various journal subscriptions through use of a commercial software product.

+ In general, subscription agents seem to enjoy a relatively high level of customer satisfaction. On the issue of timeliness of service, none of the libraries in the sample said that they were highly dissatisfied with their subscription agent and only 2.22% said that they were dissatisfied.

+ Non-academic research libraries have done more than their academic counterparts to make sure that contracts renew at the same time. Smaller institutions, those with journal budgets of less than $100,000 per year, were less likely to make such efforts than libraries with higher budgets.

Source: Primary Research

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