Theme 3: Electronic Information Resources
CUNY's E-Journal Funding Models

Presently there are three e-journal funding models within CUNY:

    (1) CUNY pays and all campuses have access to the product.

    (2) A group of campuses form a mini-consortium and split the product's cost among them.

    (3) A campus buys a product for use by its own faculty and students, or participates in an extra-CUNY consortium to get a product.

This year's problems with the SciFinder Scholar renewal, amply detailed above, caused some people to begin thinking about the equity of splitting a product's cost evenly among all participating campuses, when some campuses will obtain so much more usage of the product. And, when one looks at the chart below, why should only five of the seven campuses offering PhDs in chemistry participate in this product? Where are Hunter and Staten Island, each of which has more PhD candidates in chemistry than Brooklyn and some other participating schools as well?

It seems that a new funding model for shared products should be considered, one based on a product's anticipated usage. While such a model will not work for products whose offerings are very diverse and whose usage is therefore less easily predicted, for a resource like SciFinder Scholar it will work well and more fairly than the existing approach. Think of it this way: Brooklyn College receives access to significantly less matching money each year than does City, with its many graduate students in the sciences: why then should we and other schools subsidize their students' use of costly electronic information resources?

CHEMISTRY PHD CANDIDATES, 2003



 
Brooklyn
City
Hunter
Lehman
Queens
Staten Island
Grad Center
TOTAL
Biochemistry
4
5
9
1
1
3
35
58
Chemical Engineering
 
30
 
 
 
 
 
30
Chemistry
8
16
32
1
17
15
30
119
SCHOOL TOTALS
12
51
41
2
18
18
65
207
% OF CANDIDATES
5%
25%
20%
1%
9%
9%
31%
100%
"FAIR SHARE" OF SCIFINDER SCHOLAR $78,500 COST
$3,925
$19,625
$15,700
$785
$7,065
$7,065
$24,335
$78,500

Before the Graduate Center and Lehman College joined the Brooklyn/City/Queens mini-consortium, a division of the $78,500 subscription based on the number of each campus's PhD students in chemistry would've allocated the cost in this way:

Brooklyn 15% $ 11,775
City 63% $49,455
Queens 22% $17,270

In both cases, Brooklyn would have paid substantially less than it did, and is, were the funding model a more equitable one. The Council of Chief Librarians will need guidance and leadership from CUNY's Academic Council if they are to examine and accept new funding models for e-resources.