NATIONAL SUBSCRIPTION AND LIBRARY ACQUISITION. PART ONE. MATERIAL AND ELECTRONIC ACQUISITION BUDGETS IN RUSSIA

Abstract

Introduction. Electronic acquisition budgets are indicators of the information supply of research and education in the organization and affect its research output. The national level subscription to the global citation indexes Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus and the Freedom Collection of Elsevier released 70% of eleсtronic acquisition expenditures in the Russian libraries. The article studies the effect of the state-funded national subscription on the structure and temporal dynamics of material and electronic acquisition budgets in the Russian libraries.Materials and Methods. Materials comprise results of the data processing of the surveys on acquisition budgets in 2012–2018 and published results of the international surveys. Following our previous studies, we analyzed three main reference groups: universities (with a separate group of the Russian leading universities), research institutions and public libraries. For the purpose of this study, we created additional sub-groups of leading institutions (centers of excellence) in each reference group. From the survey data we calculated the average unit costs (both of the material and electronic acquisition budgets) in each reference group/sub-group. We also calculated relative shares of electronic and print resources in the library material budgets.Results. Since 2016, the material budgets of Russian libraries have grown after the fall caused by the economic crisis in 2014. The state-funded national subscription to the global citation indexes and the Freedom Collection of Elsevier resulted in the 2–4 times decrease in material and electronic acquisition budgets of the centers of excellence in each reference group.Discussion and Conclusions. For the first time, our study revealed the negative effect of the state-funded national subscription on the material and acquisition budgets in Russian organizations. We registered a decrease in the material budgets of the major Russian public and scientific libraries and universities.