Getting The Most Out of Pay-Per-View: A Feasibility Study and Discussion of Mediated and Unmediated Options

Abstract

The increasing costs of science, technology, and medical journals, combined with decreasing or stagnant budgets, have forced libraries to take a hard look at current journal subscriptions. Even when budgets remain stable or increase, they may not keep pace with the escalating costs of subscriptions from various publishers. In the face of potential journal cancellations, some libraries are turning to pay-per-view (PPV) as an alternative method of providing access to material demanded by patrons. This paper discusses PPV options in general and, in particular, a feasibility study carried out at Florida Institute of Technology, in which the library purchased Wiley tokens and used them in both a mediated and unmediated fashion over the course of a year.

Breaking inertia: increasing access to journals during a period of declining budgets: a case study

“…From 2008-2011, the HSL was forced to cancel numerous subscriptions, totaling approximately 30% of the journal collection, unfortunately a common experience for many libraries [5,7,14]. Limited access to information at a time when the university was placing an emphasis on research and grants was detrimental for faculty, and the HSL faculty were concerned that the reductions to the library collection were putting the students' educational experience at risk.…”

Literature of Acquisitions in Review, 2012–13

“…37 PPV was established with three publishers and the new "Get It Now" program from the Copyright Clearance Center. Challenges such as expired tokens, duplicate purchases, incompatible vendor systems and link resolvers, and conflicting collection development philosophy, were addressed.…”

The Promise of the Future: A Review of the Serials Literature, 2012–13

“…Hosburgh shows one library's experience with both models from the same publisher. 9 In either case, librarians resign themselves to the fact that they will purchase the same article several times. Busby speculates that publishers may eventually rely on multiple purchases of certain high-demand article for their revenue instead of journal subscriptions.…”