Databases Complement Journal Subscriptions
Full Text Databases, Print Journals, and Electronic Journals...
~Distinctly Different Products~
EBSCO's leading online full text databases offer access to full text articles from peer-reviewed journals published by many of the world's most prestigious academic publishers. EBSCO's full text databases offer tremendous value to an academic library by expanding access to the content of important publications already in the library's print or e-journal collection while, at the same time, providing new access to a great number of highly valuable full text resources previously unavailable to the library's users. In addition, EBSCO's databases offer a convenient way for users to search the full text articles from a large collection of publications in one easy process. And now, with the advent of EBSCO SmartLinks™, users can access the full text of articles after searching popular abstract/index databases such as PsycINFO. Users can link to full text articles in EBSCO's aggregated full text databases as well as to online journals from citations in leading secondary databases available via EBSCOhost.
Online journals (also known as e-journals) provide users with online access to articles from current issues of the journal. Online journals generally contain the same current articles that are included in current issues of the printed journal. Many full text journals in aggregated databases have embargo periods (delay of availability of full text articles imposed by publisher), and some journals that don't now have embargoes may have embargoes in the future. In addition, as the publishers own the content and control the availability of the full text through databases, there is no guarantee that a full text journal currently available via a database will continue to be available in future years.These are important distinctions between aggregated databases and online journals. For these reasons, full text databases are not a practical, long-term substitute for print or e-journal subscriptions purchased or licensed directly from the publisher.
Over the past several years, libraries have realized tremendous benefits from the use of full text databases. Costs for print subscriptions have increased an average of 8.3% each of the last two years. This is greater than the average price increase for full text databases, despite the fact that the amount of content available in these databases has increased dramatically over that same period. However, if these databases are exploited, the benefits now experienced by libraries and their users could erode. Full text databases are here to stay, but the favorable ratio of content and access to cost may not be. Naturally, modest price increases will take place as publisher royalties increase and delivery methods are improved, but dramatic cost increases may be avoidable.
Databases should be viewed as a complement (not a replacement) to the core print and electronic journal collections. If publishers experience cancellations of current (print or online) journal subscriptions due to the inclusion of their content in aggregated databases, they are likely to remove their content from these databases or increase their royalty requirements. Were this to happen, library users could be forced to deal with incomplete library collections as publishers remove content from aggregated databases, and the price of databases could increase significantly. However, this potential turmoil can likely be avoided if librarians make print and e-journal purchasing decisions independent of whether the full text of a journal is available in an aggregated full text database. Proceeding in this way should result in price and content stability within aggregated databases, ensuring that end users continue to enjoy the benefits of access to these large collections of valuable data.
For further information covering this and other topics in greater detail, please see additional published articles.
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