This presentation was provided by Sarah Koechlein of James Madison University, during the NISO event "From Submission to Publication: Creating and Conveying Quality," held on August 21, 2019.

1. Collection Strategies
Determining the Best for Your Research Community
Sarah Koechlein Pritchard
Head of Resource Access
James Madison University Libraries

2. Introduction
Head of Resource Access
● Oversee acquisitions and access processes
● Licensing, e-resources, materials budget
● Collaborate with Collections Analytics team for resource evaluation projects

3. James Madison University Libraries
JMU is located in Harrisonburg, VA
FTE of about 22,000
Population is primarily undergraduate with a relatively small graduate population
(~1,900)
Largest colleges are Business, Health & Behavioral Sciences, and Arts & Letters

4. Overview
Why journal quality and collection evaluation are important
Types of journal publications
● Acquisitions models (such as Big Deals)
● Access models (traditional, Open Access)
Tools and methods for evaluation

5. Journals

6. Quality
Understanding the publishing model for journals helps determine quality
Align support for particular models (open access) and avoid predatory journals

7. Traditional Journals
Paid subscription to print or electronic journal
Peer review
Usually well-known/ reputable publishers
Publisher copyright

8. Traditional Journals- Big Deals
Big Deal” or “bundled” journal packages emerged in the late 1990’s with the rise of
IP authenticated access.
Large, legacy collections based on print journal prices.
Publishers included a bundle of other, previously unsubscribed journal titles for a
lump sum.
For publishers, the bundled content represented an otherwise non-existent revenue
stream, since the bundled titles tended to be low use, niche, or otherwise less
popular.

9. Traditional Journals- Big Deals
Today, the Big Deal represents an unsustainable pricing model that many libraries
feel locked into because bundles include some core content.
Recession created resistance to and rejection of the big deal. Libraries wanted
pricing that made it possible to move to e-only and pricing not based on historical
pricing and spending.
Bundled content is largely low-use content

10. Resisting the Big Deal
University of California system cancelled Elsevier contract in January 2019 of this
year
● Higher cost with reduced rights
● Limited ability for UC to financially support authors
● Elsevier excluded OA publishing in some of its journals
Norway reaches agreement with Elsevier
● Nationwide
● Norwegian authors published in OA journals through Elsevier

11. Open Access Journals
Open access scholarly content is available on the open web, free of charge to readers.
Reputable publishers
Manuscript publication- fewer copyright restrictions
Academic institutions are pushing publishers to move some (or ideally, all) journal
content to an OA model.
OA efforts break the publisher monopoly on scholarly content.

12. Open Access Journals
APCs
● Author paid article processing charges
Green OA
● Author of a work self-archives the work after publication.
● Libraries facilitate this effort by supporting institutional repositories.
Gold OA
● Publishers make peer-reviewed journals available on the open web.
● More disruptive to the current publishing model.

13. Predatory Publishing
“Predatory Publishing” coined by Jeffrey Beall in 2010
● Beall maintained a blacklist but without much justification for titles included.
Many legitimate titles were included simply because they were based in the
Global South
Predatory journals masquerade as legitimate OA. Create platforms and generate
money based on APCs.
Can be difficult to detect
Predatory = Unethical

14. Predatory Publishing
In 2014, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) instituted a vetting process
for OA journals. DOAJ remains a reliable resource for true OA content.
DOAJ maintains “blacklist” of journals.
International ISSN Centre has also tightened guidelines for issuing ISSNs and
maintains the right to refuse.
Some large, reputable publishers are often described as predatory because they
promote Open Access as part of a business model, but charge high APCs.
SPARC

15. Distinguishing Predatory Journals
Lack of academic affiliation
Spam emails promising fast peer review processes and provide little information on
author-paid fees
Be aware of the newness of the publisher
Missing and inconsistent information: location, journal metrics, ISSN, indexing
More information by Monica Berger for ALA

16. Evaluation Tools

17. Quality
Determining quality and conducting regular evaluation of journals is crucial to
maintaining relevant collections.
Essential for budget: shrinking and stable budgets necessitate regular review of
content for relevancy.

18. Journal Impact Factor
Traditional method for evaluating journal quality.
Developed in the 1970s.
Measure takes number of citations accrued in the previous 2 years of a journal’s
publication, divided by the total number of articles published in that journal.
The higher the figure, the higher impact.
Number is calculated in Scopus, Web of Science, and other sources.

19. Journal Impact Factor
Can be a useful indicator within a field, but the JIF can differ drastically between
fields based on funding and publishing frequency.
Typically, few articles in a journal are responsible for the JIF.
Should not be the only indicator for ranking and rating journals.

20. Cost per Use
COUNTER is a standard that many publishers and platforms use for harvesting and
reporting usage statistics for journals.
Using COUNTER allows for consistency in usage reporting, generating a more
reliable cost per use.
Cost per use divides cost across usage for a journal title.
Provides a good comparable metric to compare cost.

21. Cost per Use
Cost per Use gets tricky when dealing with bundled collections of journals that do
not have an individual cost associated.
Does not accurately reflect the quality of the journal.
Does not take into account whether a journal is used for research or curricula.
Not all vendors and platforms are COUNTER compliant.

22. New Methods
JIF and CPU serve a purpose when evaluating journals, but fall short of providing a
holistic picture of journal quality.

23. Moving away from JIF
CiteScore- CiteScore is the number of citations received by a journal in one year to
documents published in the three previous years, divided by the number of
documents indexed in Scopus published in those same three years.
SJR- SCImago Journal Rank. SJR is weighted by the prestige of a journal. Subject
field, quality, and reputation of the journal have a direct effect on the value of a
citation.
SNIP- Source Normalized Impact per Paper. SNIP measures a source’s contextual
citation impact by weighting citations based on the total number of citations in a
subject field. It helps you make a direct comparison of sources in different subject
fields.

24. Open Access
When evaluating a journal collection, it is possible to use 1figr, Scopus, or Web of
Science to pull information based on percentage of the collection that is OA.
Be aware that this number may not be an accurate representation of OA since it can
be based on either Green or Gold standard.

25. Scholarly Communication and Altmetrics
NISO definition of Altmetrics:
● “Altmetrics is a broad term that encapsulates the collection of multiple digital
indicators related to scholarly work. These indicators are derived from activity
and engagement among diverse stakeholders and scholarly outputs in the
research ecosystem, including the public sphere”.
Understanding the impact that scholarly work has through institutional repositories,
social media, blogs, etc.
Moving away from citation-based measures.

26. Scholarly Communication and Altmetrics
Measures include social media and interaction on non-traditional scholarly platforms
(blogs)
● Reads, Tweets, Likes, Downloads, Bookmarks, etc.
Altmetrics tools (some open source and some proprietary):
● Explorer, F1000, Kudos, Mendeley Stats, ReaderMeter, ImpactStory, PloS
Impact Explorer, and PlumX
Tied to the open access and open data movement.
Atmetrics attempt to measure article or creator, not journal impact.

27. Scholarly Communication and Altmetrics:
Limitations and Room for Growth
Altmetrics measure attention, largely on social media. It can be difficult to decipher
the nature of the attention (also an issue with traditional metrics).
Interaction with scholarly content is open and available to a wide audience, not just
scholars. This is not a bad thing, but must be considered when measuring attention
received and that some topics and disciplines are more popular or accessible to a
wide audience.
Easy to generate “false” attention to a work.

28. Conclusion

29. Thank you!
koech2sj@jmu.edu | @sjkoechlein