Math and Aftermath Impacts of Unbundling a Large Journal Package on Researcher Perceptions and Behavior

This study seeks to understand the effects of a shift from a near-comprehensive journals package with a single, large publisher to a selective list of individual journal subscriptions on the work of researchers at a large research university. Analyzing historical journal usage, along with turnaway and interlibrary loan trends from the years following the changes, the authors made use of structured interviews with local researchers to bring context and meaning to the quantitative data. The interviews highlighted researchers’ strategies for gaining access to literature in their fields to which the library does not subscribe, and revealed assumptions about timeliness of access, as well as relationships between library subscriptions and local researchers’ publishing behavior.