Loss of Print Journals from Academic Libraries
While accurate figures are hard to find, there is anecdotal evidence that many academic libraries in the UK and the US are dramatically reducing the number of printed journals in this collections. There are good arguments to support this practice:
Most users of journals prefer to access them electronically
The amount of shelf-space freed up by removing journals can be considerable
The are savings to be made by opting for digital-only subscriptions
However, there are also reasons to be cautious, as once the print copies of a journal have been removed access requires an ongoing subscription to the journal or journal database. This is fine as long as sufficient funding is available to maintain that subscription, which for many independent colleges and increasing for universities may not be the case. In addition, there is another factor that will directly affect those wishing to access academic theological journals who are no longer students at a College or University and lack any kind of Alumni access. While it might be possible to pay for physical access to a theological library, access to the electronic resources is restricted by license to current students/alumni only. This means that visitors cannot access the digital journals and may have no option but to take out a personal subscription to multiple journals or pay for downloading a single article, which regularly costs in the region of £30 in the UK.
Of course, the accessibility of journals by non-students is going to play little part in a College or University’s decision-making, as visitor fees usually make up a very small part of their budget. Nonetheless, it seems very likely that those outside of the College/University system will in coming years find it increasingly difficult to access academic theological articles. It is possible that this will serve to widen the divide between academia and the Church by shutting pastors and Bible teachers off from the fruits of scholarship.
This may be one of the reasons why visitor numbers to BiblicalStudies.org.uk continue to rise, because it provides a means of accessing scholarship free of charge.
What do you think? Feel free to share your comments and experience of trying to access theological journals.
Remember to share the Theology on the Web sites with any Bible College / Seminary student you know:
Hub site - https://theologyontheweb.org.uk
Biblical Archaeology - https://bibicalarcheology.org.uk
Biblical Studies - https://biblicalstudies.org.uk
Early Church History - https://earlychurch.org.uk
Medieval Church History - https://medievalchurch.org.uk
Reformation Church History - https://reformationchurch.org.uk
Christian Missions - https://missiology.org.uk
Theology - https://theologicalstudies.org.uk
I work in one of those theological libraries and you raise a very good point about non students having no access to electronic journals. I hadn’t thought about that before, although in our case if the patron is in the library they can have access on our computers.
Very insightful points here, Rob.
Looking back, one big shift I noticed was a point I'm guessing about 15 years ago when the price of theological journals rocketed because they were taken on by big publishing houses. This became a big proportion of the overall library budget for colleges and so we had to prioritise key journals. So, depending on the college, even some students won't have access to certain journals. And, as you say, it is certainly getting harder to access some journals, especially for non-students.
At some point as well I think a lot of colleges reached a point where the having additional electronic access moved from 'nice to have' to 'essential', not least because of the rise of people studying at distance or part-time. I suspect that even campus-based students prefer to access journals electronically, though I don't have stats for that!
Another factor is that we often subscribe to journal collections rather than individual titles, so it depends what titles are included in the collections.
However, while all that is true, it has never been easier for a non-student to access a wealth of academic resources. More journals are going open access. I wonder if we are reaching a point where we either have super expensive journals or open access journals, and not much inbetween!
Happily academics sometimes have permission to publish newish articles on their academia page.
And, of course, there are also your excellent websites!
Thanks for all you are doing.