Equitable Access, Public Stewardship, and Access to Scholarly Information | CSU Libraries Network

"The twenty-three libraries serving nearly 500,000 students and scholars at California State University’s diverse campuses are firmly committed to their mission of providing equitable access to academic and professional information resources to every student and scholar.  We are equally committed to the principle of responsible stewardship of the public funds entrusted to us to meet our mission of service to these students and scholars. It is therefore with deep regret that we share the news with our colleagues and the students and faculty we serve, that on December 19, 2014, we made the decision not to continue, as a system, to provide system-wide access to a collection of over 1300 electronic journals published by a major publisher of scholarly and professional journals, John Wiley and Company. We were unable to reach an agreement with Wiley and Company that met our fundamental goal of providing equitable access to information across all 23 campuses.  The terms offered to the CSU by Wiley and Company would have cost more than many of our campuses could afford.  This meant that several campuses would be forced to cancel their subscriptions, and that these campuses’ share of the total package costs would be remanded to other campuses. This was not acceptable to us. As well, we were unable to reach an agreement with Wiley that met our responsibility for careful stewardship of limited public funds.  The terms offered by Wiley and Company would have meant a cost increase of 10-12% across the CSU system: nearly double the average reported 2014 journal inflation rates reported by Library Journal in 2014. While Wiley and Company offered access to additional content as part of their terms, the CSU libraries did not find the value of the additional content compelling.  Our records showed that most of this additional content was unneeded and seldom-consulted. The CSU libraries offered to maintain their system-wide license with a smaller package of several hundred electronic journals that would have met both these core principles: equitable access, and responsible stewardship.  This offer was rejected by Wiley and Company ..."