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REFEREED ARTICLE

Periodicals: print or electronic?

Martin Zimerman
Long Island University Library, Brooklyn, New York, USA
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe how the tipping point may have been reached with regard to the transition of periodicals between print and electronic. Design/methodology/approach The literature search encompassed articles on the transition of periodicals between print and electronic status. Findings Libraries will soon have to decide, based on budget, what is affordable in terms of periodicals. Vendors are integral to this process and libraries need to negotiate skillfully with them in order to keep costs in line. Electronic resources will serve researchers well, since they provide easy computerized access (searching, cut and paste) to materials previously only found in print. Research limitations/implications There is a dichotomy of feelings represented in the literature on the transition of journals from print to electronic. Most of the literature seems to indicate that the move to electronic journals is good for researchers. Practical implications The move to electronic resources will provide a rich base of digital literature that was not available to researchers before, and this will result in upgraded efforts at publication. Searching electronically can be an enormous timesaver and provides a previously unknown range of searching. Originality/value The research includes examples of what experts in the eld suggest to resolve this issue. Keywords Digital libraries, Electronic journals, Paper, Transition management Paper type Viewpoint

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Received 24 February 2010 Reviewed 27 April 2010

Introduction In 1456, Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, forever changing our world. Since that time, mankind has found more and more ways to disseminate information. From the printing press to personal computers to the Worldwide web, we are combining print with electronic resources and, by doing so, we are spreading the worlds knowledge base to faculty, students and to everyone else that needs information. The computers are becoming more and more portable, and the electronic networks are now widespread enough that you can, with the proper equipment, do your research almost anywhere. In some cases there is a digital divide; people who cannot afford computer equipment or resources that are physically inaccessible but if you are within reasonable distance of a public or academic library and their books, periodicals, computers and databases, you will have no shortage of research materials with which to work. As Breeding (2006, p. 32) states:
New Library World Vol. 111 No. 9/10, 2010 pp. 426-433 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0307-4803 DOI 10.1108/03074801011089341

Then came the digital revolution. Beginning about a decade ago, libraries became deeply involved in acquiring electronic content in addition to their traditional print collections. At rst, the amount of digital content was fairly limited, maybe a few dozen e-journals. Librarians kept lists of them on web pages, for users. But dozens soon became hundreds, and hundreds soon became thousands.

For many libraries today, investments for digital content outpace those for print materials. Acquisition comes in many forms. Some content is acquired individually, but much is obtained through big aggregated collections . . . Business relationships with publishers are in a constant state of ux. E-journal titles can easily appear or disappear in a heartbeat. Contractual issues can also bend to the whims of these large aggregators of journals.

Periodicals: print or electronic?

Several days ago, a student came to the reference desk looking for an article. He had all the information needed about the article, including the title of the magazine, publication date, and issue number. When students come to the desk, I usually recommend that they allow me to help them search for an electronic version of the article. This allows me to quickly focus the search and saves a lot of time. We searched through EbscoHost and several other large databases, only to nd that the issue we were looking for was, for some reason, proscribed from our full text collection. This is such an unusual circumstance that I took a chance and looked in the periodicals section for a paper copy, which happily I found. I know that it is almost impossible to have paper copies of every possible magazine and journal on hand. I also know how prohibitively expensive it would be to have both print and electronic copies available for all the subscriptions to which that we have access. The following graph from ARL Statistics, 2007-2008 (Kyrillidou and Bland, 2009). Figure 1 shows how disproportionately expensive electronic resources can be: It still remains to be seen how long into the future we will still have access to paper-based periodicals. As reported by Quint (2008, p. 7):
As the people born and raised in the 1970s and 1980s and their children dominate the demographics, the chip generation may come to nd print formats a retro oddity. While the demise of print has long been predicted, I notice that not all the paper and pulp producers have closed their factory doors or sold all their forests to developers. However, with the heavy

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Figure 1. Electronic resources vs. total materials expenditure, 1993-2008 yearly increases in average expenditures

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dependence that publishers still place on print as the format from which all else ows or at least subscription revenue and the print-driven justication for physical libraries, prints survival certainly remains an issue of interest for all kinds of information professionals.

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One library at the University of Pittsburgh started showing holes in their print collection. Hundreds of little cardboard signs appeared on the shelves, indicating that certain years publications were only available in electronic format (Gibbs, 2003, p. 24). It is a given, in the current economic climate, that most academic libraries will have a budget shortfall. This means that items will get cut from the budget, even important items such as the very rich electronic resources to which we have all become used. According to Van Orsdel and Born (2009, p. 36):
As waves of grim economic news wash over state and federal governments here and abroad, libraries of all types and sizes are bracing for budget cuts the likes of which have not been seen in three generations. Unlike most nancial crises, this one is ubiquitous, with all but a handful of states in the red and getting redder. Globally, the meltdown is playing havoc with currencies, and the cost of journals priced in currencies other than the pound, the euro, or the US dollar have skyrocketed. Severe losses in endowment revenue, which in the past insulated materials budgets to a degree, have left even larger and wealthier libraries facing cuts. A number of librarians expect the budget cuts to be permanent; others say funds will rebound, but the recovery will take years. Even if the recession is less severe than feared, experts say not to expect relief before 2012.

This recession, hitting an industry trying to reinvent itself, will be damaging (Van Orsdel and Born, 2009, p. 36). There are indeed hard economic decisions that will have to be made by all libraries, public or academic. Gibbs (2003, p. 24) writes:
We are in the midst of a massive transformation to the Digital Library, says Patricia Mickelson, Director of the University of Pittsburghs Medical Library. Scientists and doctors nd electronic resources much more convenient, she says, and we just cant afford both electronic and print versions.

On the other hand, maybe we have an embarrassment of riches. Personally, as the Electronic Services Librarian, I get many misdirected calls, usually meant for the Electronic Resources Librarian, from vendors of databases, looking to sell their wares. I pass these calls on to the Electronic Resources Librarian. I do make a note of the call and will usually remember it when the time comes to attend the inevitable demonstration for the product. In most cases, the vendor representative will comment on how their database product can supplant some of our existing database products. The representatives do not usually come right out and say which databases we should replace, but they slyly quote bundle prices (at reasonable levels) that would include the databases that they are suggesting we should replace. It is a little underhanded, but could conceivably end in a sale. This leads to the main point. So many databases We subscribe to so many databases, from so many vendors, that there is indeed quite a large overlap of electronic resources. If pressed, the vendors, in a bid to outsell their competitors, will likely tell you exactly which of the databases overlap (as well as which of the other vendors offerings you should drop).

It would seem that it should be very easy to stop duplication of the electronic resources to which we subscribe, but in fact, that is just not true. As I mentioned before, the products are bundled in just such a way that they cannot be broken out and cancelled without tipping the pricing balance of the overall product to unfavorable levels. In some cases, older content is offered for free, or very cheaply, while the most current content, the last year or so, are charged high per-view fees. Gibbs (2003, p. 26) also writes:
Pressured by a boycott among some high-prole scientists in 2001, certain journals began offering free public access to back issues a year or more after publication. But most charge high per view fees for recent articles.

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Some vendors will not allow you to cancel a subscription at all, under any circumstances. It is highly unfortunate, but the fact of the matter is that as Silverman says (cited in Gibbs, 2003, p. 24), a few giant publishers publish most of the journals, and they are only available through bundled packaging. This leaves the general public out in the cold. Also, we do not think twice about allowing access to our print publications. However, in some cases, where information from a particular issue of the journal is being sought, and the paper journal is not available, and the person seeking the information does not have the proper authorization, such as user name and password, he or she is out of luck, and must seek to obtain the information elsewhere. The current movement in literature is towards digitization. This, of course, includes many paper journals that previously resided on the periodical shelves. Nowadays, if you go looking for current editions of medical or scientic journals, you are likely to nd some kind of marker indicating that the content that you are looking for is now only available in digitized format. This, in turn, leaves gaping holes in the print collection on the shelves. Gibbs (2003, p. 26) states:
Research libraries are likely to continue carrying print copies of general interest journals, such as Science, Nature and the New England Journal of Medicine. And a few powerful institutions among them the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California at San Francisco have insisted on walk up clauses in their contracts that allow any patron full access to their online journals and workstations within the library. But they are the exception; as a rule, Silverman says, publishers insist that their online journals remain protected from the general public.

The Worldwide Web changed everything The Worldwide Web has changed everything. The medium of cyberspace allowed things to happen that were just not possible before. New technologies sprang into existence. Companies like Ebsco and Proquest adapted to the model provided and even expanded its capabilities. According to Johnson and Luther (2007, p. v):
As academic librarians, publishers, authors of research articles, and readers of journals well know, journals began a profound and ongoing makeover with the arrival of the Worldwide Web. Technological, economic, and human factors are transforming both journals, and the brother process of scholarly communication. The rst phase of development for the 21st Century Journal has taken two forms, the born-electronic journals and the electronic editions of print-based journals.

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Print editions of journals are almost certainly doomed to be discarded as electronic versions are born. For the moment however, we live in a hybrid world where both print and electronic versions of the publications coexist (Johnson and Luther, 2007, p. v). Many challenges exist in this publishing transition zone that taxes the status quo for libraries, publishers, authors and readers ( Johnson and Luther, 2008, p. 1). I will freely admit that there is nothing like a book or journal in its print format for entertainment or pleasure reading, but for research purposes, nothing beats the convenience and ease of use of the electronic format databases. As stated by Johnson and Luther (2007, p. 1):
Approximately 60 percent of the universe of some 20,000 active peer-reviewed journals is available in electronic form.

Johnson and Luther (2008, p. 2) indicate that there have long been predictions of electronic publications replacing print publications. Now, about a decade and a half after the introduction of the Worldwide Web, many journals are published in a dual format, both in print and electronically at the same time. Some, to the contrary are still only published in a print edition. Some journals, where no print edition has ever existed, are considered born digital. The presumption was that the print version of the journal would be discarded and that the journal would thereafter only be found in a digital format. A publishers bottom line can be vastly improved by the elimination of a print publication and substituting it with a digital publication. By eliminating the costs involved with mailing, printing, storage, claims and various other costs the publisher could save a lot of money. The publisher must also be wary of the possibility of loss of revenue due to loss of advertising in a digital format ( Johnson and Luther, 2008, p. 2). There is little doubt that most users of resource materials today prefer to use electronic resources. Johnson and Luther (2007, p. 1) agree:
The users have votedand they want the convenience of electronic.

The tools provided by the database aggregators make the previously onerous task of gathering a sufcient amount of scholarly material almost easy. You can select appropriate data, collate it into a folder, and deal with that data in a variety of ways. This, in some cases, also allows you to cite the material in your citation style of choice with one extra step. If you also have a Refworks bibliographic citation manager account, you have the best combination of research tools available. Aggressive vendors The database resource vendors seem to live in fear of your using someone elses product to do your research. They aggressively seek your business and try to undercut pricing by rival vendors. They always try to use the most current technologies to help in their sales effort. If information cannot be found online, scholars will not use it. Publishers are very well aware of this fact, especially in scientic and medical disciplines (Johnson and Luther, 2007, p. 2). Even with the total number of print subscriptions dropping, the threshold heightens because prices increase for the individual print journal (Johnson and Luther, 2007, p. 2).

Aside from the green aspects of digital information, there are other considerations to be taken into account. It is fairly easy and much less expensive to create digital content. Once a platform for digital content is established, the vendor does not have a great deal of other expenses. They must, however, keep their technology up to date and support the technology with expert technical support. This does cost money and must be paid for by library subscription to the resource aggregators. There is much deal making also, with vendors buying out weaker hands in the industry. This accounts for the addition of products taken over to the current and new database offerings. Breeding (2006, p. 32) reports:
Then came the digital revolution. Beginning about a decade ago, libraries became deeply involved in acquiring electronic content in addition to their traditional print collections. At rst, the amount of digital content was fairly limited, maybe a few dozen e-journals. Librarians kept lists of them on web pages, for users. But dozens soon became hundreds, and hundreds soon became thousands. For many libraries today, investments for digital content outpace those for print materials. Acquisition comes in many forms. Some content is acquired individually, but much is obtained through big aggregated collections.

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Marshall Breeding, director for Innovative Technology and Research for the Vanderbilt University Library at Vanderbilt University, maintains that print management will continue into the foreseeable future, even with precipitous rise in the use of electronic content (Breeding, 2006, p. 32). Schonfeld (2007, p.185) adds:
Some publishers have a difcult transition to make as well. Smaller publishers, such as scholarly societies, independent university-based journals, and some university presses, have not yet developed models that will allow them to thrive (or survive) in an electronic-only environment. As they do so, price increases on their electronic editions are in some cases inevitable, in order for them to achieve sustainability. It is almost certainly in the interests of libraries to try to help the smaller not for-prot publishers, in some cases by developing services such as BioOne, Project Muse, and HighWire Press that help to support the transition, and also by evaluating both absolute price increases along with percentage price increases for the lower-priced publishers.

Money makes the world go round In cases where a print journal is the optimal choice for the research at hand, there will soon be a dilemma. As expressed by Boeri (2008, p. 20):
As a subscriber to many print publications, I now have a problem that I believe will soon affect consumers and publishers alike: resistance to increasing print publication costs. I realized for some time that the problem was coming print publications are increasingly expensive to create, produce and deliver but the problem really struck home when I received my biannual renewal notice for The Wall Street Journal. In my undergraduate days, I was a willing victim when I accepted a teaser offer of $16 for a one-year subscription. I knew that price wouldnt last, but I became hooked and since then Ive renewed every two years, including the digital edition. However, this years bill gave me a case of sticker shock at nearly 30 times the original teaser price. This could also apply to public and academic libraries.

It seems that almost all of the traps and dilemmas can be solved monetarily, except for the fact that there is less money available to libraries and schools due to the meltdown

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of the economy. Students can no longer get their loans for high tuition rates and that, in turn, is resulting in less money for the libraries and schools to spend on expensive digital and paper collections. Goehner (1992, p. 10) relates:
Can electronic services and products help? They can, but not without costs. While there is a keen interest in exploiting new technologies, funding restraints and the speed with which technology changes are factors that complicate the issue. Cost constraints are real; and even as librarians stand at the brink of a powerful communication and information revolution, there are limitations on how much hardware and software can be acquired to take full advantage of these electronic services. Along with extraordinary possibilities, technology has created extraordinary problems as well. We now need more and more equipment to permit user access to our own collections and to remote databases and resources. Soon we will be able to add full-text document delivery to the choices our users have through services such as CARL Uncover and Faxon Xpress . . . In the meantime, collection developers have to try to meet informational needs of current users while building useful collections for future users. In addition to being strong advocates for adequate funding from the central administration, they must become principal players in the librarys internal budgeting processes. Furthermore, collection development activities need to be broadened to encompass all the activities implied in the term collection management. With little hope that budgets will be increased by any signicant amounts in the future, collection managers may begin working away from print sources toward computerization, cross-lending programs, and article delivery services. New and improved electronic scanning techniques also provide options for collecting and storing information electronically, decreasing the librarys need to acquire the print format.

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Conclusion It is quite obvious that a dichotomy exists here. We can no longer afford to buy everything that the publishers have to offer. Every day now I see a stream of e-mails from concerned parties, librarians, who are aware of the budget crunch that we are in, and are looking for ways to cut costs. In the event that no digital copy of an article exists, the researcher must fall back to getting a copy of the paper-based article. If the article does not appear in a local collection, Inter-Library Loan could be used to acquire the article. The most obvious way for periodicals departments to cut costs, is to eliminate print copies of journals and magazines when an alternative, digital form of the material exists. As much as it pains us to give up the print journals, there seems to be no real choice. It is highly unlikely that these budget constraints will go away anytime soon, if ever. The bright side of the coin is that due to the ever-present competition between the publishers, there will be occasional bargains to be had. The publishers still want to sell their products to the libraries and will probably be willing to give up some prots in order to sell to the libraries, especially where content overlaps other databases.
References Boeri, R. (2008), News to go: paper or digital?, Information Today, December. Breeding, M. (2006), Knitting systems together, Computers in Libraries, Vol. 26 No. 9, pp. 32-5. Gibbs, W.W. (2003), Public not welcome, Scientic American, Vol. 289 No. 3, pp. 24-6. Goehner, D.M. (1992), Steady as she goes: moving from print to electronic, Journal of Academic Librarianship, Vol. 18 No. 1, p. 9.

Johnson, R.K. and Luther, J. (2007), The E-Only Tipping Point for Journals: Whats Ahead in the Print-to-Electronic Transition Zone?, ARL, Washington, DC, p. 40. Johnson, R.K. and Luther, J. (2008), Are Journal Publishers Trapped in the Dual-Media Transition Zone?, ARL: A Bimonthly Report on Research Library Issues & Actions, ARL, Washington, DC, pp. 1-6. Kyrillidou, M. and Bland, L. (2009), ARL Statistics, 2007-2008, ARL, Washington, DC, pp. 1-152. Quint, B. (2008), Why isnt print dead . . . yet?, Information Today, September. Schonfeld, R.C. (2007), Getting from here to there, safely: library strategic planning for the transition away from print journals, Serials Librarian, Vol. 52 No. 1, pp. 183-9. Van Orsdel, L. and Born, K. (2009), Periodicals price survey 2009. Reality bites: in the face of the downturn, libraries and publishers brace for big cuts, Library Journal, Vol. 134 No. 7, pp. 36-40. About the author Martin Zimerman is an Assistant Professor, working in the library at Long Island University, Brooklyn campus. He is the Electronic Services librarian at this large, urban campus. Martin Zimerman can be contacted at: martin.zimerman@liu.edu

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