0.5 Potential effects of online access on society membership  (Page 5/7)

A Stanford University online journal user survey examined the behavior of faculty users of electronic journals who had joined societies and who ordered or cancelled personal subscriptions in the previous year. Stanford University Libraries (2002), 21-22. The Stanford study indicates that the most frequent reason for faculty cancelling a journal subscription was an abrupt price increase rather than free access to the journal via an online library subscription. About 22 percent of respondents in the Stanford eJUSt survey reported having cancelled a journal in the previous year; 18 percent reported subscribing to a new journal. Stanford University Libraries (2002), 21. This suggests that a sharp increase in a journal’s individual member dues would pose a greater threat to a society’s individual membership base than would electronic site licenses.

Faculty attitudes towards their libraries’ retention of print subscriptions may provide some insight into print preference by discipline. For example, we can interpret responses to a faculty survey, conducted in 2006, to determine the approximate percentage of faculty, by discipline, that continue to hold a strong preference for print access. Schonfeld and Guthrie (2007), 8-9 . The survey asked whether faculty were prepared for the library to cancel a print edition of a journal, as long as the journal remains available in electronic format. We have interpreted responses that do not agree with that statement as a broad indication of preference for print. Researcher preferences for online access to journals, by academic discipline, is discussed in Section 2.2.2. The survey suggests a strong preference for print by discipline as follows:

Classics: 65%

History: 60%

Philosophy: 50%

Law: 45%

Sociology: 40%

Art History: 35%

Biological Sciences: 30%

Economics: 30%

Engineering: 25%

Given the highly variable and constantly changing demand for print by discipline, the best indication of the value that a society’s members place on a personal print copy of a journal will be a recent, methodologically sound, survey of a society’s membership. Lacking such data, a society may need to rely on general indicators by discipline and age such as those discussed above.

Other publication benefits

Some societies may offer other publication benefits, in addition to a peer-reviewed journal, that members value. Such benefits can include:

• A member newsletter—member newsletters and magazines can help retain members, as long as they are not included as part of an institutional membership;
• Publication of non-peer-reviewed—but valuable—scholarly material, such as conference proceedings, online archival collections, special program papers, and posters;
• Lower or waived submission or page charges when publishing in the society’s journal— in disciplines where page charges are prevalent, members that contribute to the society’s journal will benefit from savings on page charges; In some scientific disciplines, particularly in the life sciences, society-sponsored journals frequently assess publication charges to partially offset the cost of publication.
• Discounts on other journals and/or monographs, whether from the society itself, in cooperation with other societies, or negotiated with commercial publishers;
• The society’s membership directory—whether online or in print;
• Members-only personalization features (for example, email alerts, personal work spaces, etc.) for the society’s online content.