Researcher User Behaviour Offers Insight on the Impacts of Cancelling a Big-Deal Package
Journal Article
Overview
abstract
A Review of: ; Walker, K. S., Chandler, A., Finlay, C., Gessner, G. C., Hines, T., Kendrick, S., Koennecke, J., McEwen, L., Sayward, J., & Spoon, H. (2025). Math and aftermath: Impacts of unbundling a large journal package on researcher perceptions and behavior. Library Resources & Technical Services, 69(1). https://doi.org/10.5860/lrts.69n1.8170 ; Objective – To understand researcher behaviours related to the inconsistency between historical usage and interlibrary loan (ILL) requests and historical usage and turnaway data after the cancellation of a “Big Deal” license. ; Design – Analysis of historical usage data, turnaway counts, and ILL requests for cancelled titles. Qualitative interviews with library users who had published in, cited, or submitted an ILL request for a cancelled title. ; Setting – Cornell University, an R1 institution. ; Subjects – Ithaca campus, Weill Medical College, and Cornell Tech library users (quantitative data) and selected Ithaca Campus library users (interviews). ; Methods – The authors analyzed two years of historical usage data for 853 cancelled journal titles alongside ILL requests and COUNTER-compliant turnaway reports for four years following cancellation. R scripts matched ISSNs with turnaway data and journal titles with respective data in ILLiad. ; Twenty-four interviews were conducted with “super-users,” library users who had cited one of the cancelled journals in a published work, written an article published in a cancelled journal, or requested an article from a cancelled journal. Questions related to their experiences finding journal articles not available through Cornell’s libraries. ; Main Results – Connections between historic usage and turnaways varied significantly by discipline. Journals in scientific or medical disciplines had the highest counts for both turnaways and ILL requests. Interviews with “super users” revealed that these patrons employed multiple tactics for finding non-subscribed content, most frequently relying on professional networks through several modalities. ILL was viewed as helpful and quick but was not necessarily the first tactic used by interviewees. Time restrictions for writing or responding to publication process deadlines appeared to inhibit willingness to wait for a requested article through ILL. Library access to a given journal did not affect inclination to publish there for many interviewees, who noted a desire to publish in top-tier or a subject-relevant set of journals. For others, these cancellations invoked questions about a journal’s ability to disseminate their research widely and pushed them towards journals for which Cornell retained a subscription. ; Conclusion – Disciplinary area appears to be a major factor influencing patrons’ need for cancelled titles, but users’ multiple strategies for accessing non-subscribed content contribute to the disconnect between historic usage and post-cancellation ILL requests and turnaway statistics. The authors believe that lower-than-expected attempts to use library pathways for access and lack of advocacy for specific non-subscribed titles could be further explained by good decisions about which journals to cut. Cornell retains a robust collection, and remaining journal subscriptions could offer many patrons sufficient means to fulfill their needs.
