Journal Subscription Selection Process

HSLIC follows the procedure below when we receive a request for a new journal subscription from a faculty or staff member or from a student at the Health Sciences Center.

Initial Inquiry and Information Gathering

Requests for new subscriptions are routed to the Collection Management Librarian for investigation.

The Collection Management Librarian gathers information about the title. At a minimum, the following questions are answered:

• Is the title already available at UNM? (if so, the process ends with a response to the requestor.)
• Do we have access to an embargoed version of the title?
• Is the journal indexed in a major HSLIC database (e.g., PubMed or CINAHL, depending upon the subject area)?
• Have we owned the journal in the past and discontinued the subscription?
• What is the price of an institutional subscription in electronic format?
• What is the cost of a personal subscription in electronic and/or print format?
• How many issues are there per year?
• What is the Impact Factor and the rank within the subject area?
• What is the volume and diversity of interlibrary loans placed over a two- to four-year period?
• What is the Copyright Clearance Center royalty fee per article?

This information is then sent back to the requestor with a preliminary opinion on purchase and reasons supporting the opinion. A communication outlining the next steps in the process is also provided.

Departmental Support and Cost Balancing

New journal requests may originate at any level of the organization; however, after the initial information gathering (described above), formal requests must come to HSLIC from an HSC faculty member.

Formal requests should include the following:

• Justification of need
• How institutional priorities are addressed by the title
• An estimate of the HSC audience size for the journal 

Requests that include supporting statements from additional faculty members are given additional consideration for purchase.

When all the information has been gathered, a recommendation is made by the Collection Management Librarian to the Collection Resources Group for approval, further investigation or declining of the subscription request.

The Collection Management Librarian communicates the decision to the department requestor.

Approved requests are held until the designated time for ordering and canceling titles.

In the event that the budget does not allow the purchase of a requested title, HSLIC may elect to present the requesting department with a list of currently received subject specific journals. We may ask the department to work with HSLIC to select subscriptions to cancel, which would help offset the cost of the requested title.

Adopted December 2011 by the HSLIC Print & Electronic Resources Committee