Summer 2022 Update

The UW Libraries, including the Health Sciences Library, continue to negotiate licenses and prices with publishers and vendors. As stewards of the Health Sciences Library collections and University funding, we strive to support the six health sciences schools' teaching, learning, and research with economical purchases and subscriptions. When the UW Libraries is unable to add a resource, Interlibrary Loan (ILL) provides access to resources from partner libraries for free to current UW students, faculty, and staff.

Subscription Review 2020-21

Fall 2021 Update

The full list of final cancellations of all UW Libraries (including Health Sciences Library) resources is available online. 

By soliciting your feedback, the Health Sciences Library Collections Team chose to elevate faculty, student, and staff voices above zero-sum perspectives about allocations and expenditures. Thank you for your feedback and for your understanding as the library endeavors to refine the collection while remaining on budget.

September 22, 2021, Update

The UW Libraries will recoup approximately $500,000 annually by reducing the Wiley e-journal package to continue direct access to titles whose use-adjusted-cost justifies that access. We will retain 400 of the most highly used journals. The remaining 1,000 journals will be cancelled (see proposed cancellation list) as of 2022. 

Our calculations indicate that we will retain access to 92% of the usage of Wiley journal articles. The content of many of these 1,000 journals can also be found within other resources such as JSTOR, Academic Search Complete, Communication Source, or is available open access in PubMed Central (PMC) and other open access repositories. As we have always done for articles from unsubscribed journals, we will continue to acquire needed articles via interlibrary loan. 

Please provide your comments regarding individual titles by October 12, 2021, see instructions for submitting feedback. 

Thank you for your time and feedback! 

About the Subscription Review 2020-21

What?

The Health Sciences Library is inviting the UW health sciences community to provide feedback on a list of journal subscriptions. This is an initial list of journal subscriptions that are under consideration; it is not a list of subscriptions that the library is planning to cancel nor is it a comprehensive list of our journal subscriptions. After reviewing faculty, student, and staff feedback, the Health Sciences Library Collections Team will use their expertise to determine which journal subscriptions of the subset listed must be cancelled to stay within the budget.

More details about what the collections review is:

Due to the pace of serials cost inflation and to prepare for the possibility of a flat or decreased budget for collections in the 2021-22 fiscal year, the University of Washington Libraries is planning to cancel some journals and other subscriptions. Please browse the list of selected journal subscriptions to provide feedback (by either scrolling through the alphabetical list or using Control + F (Mac: Command + F) to find a particular title) and then click on the Submit Feedback link to the right of that title to help us construct a list of subscriptions that may be considered for cancellation.

As stewards of the Health Sciences Library collections and University funding, our hope is to move away from binary and zero-sum perspectives about allocations and expenditures. Instead, our intention is to engage in substantive and collaborative discussions that result in making the best possible decisions on acquiring, retaining, and cancelling subscriptions, given current resources and long-term implications on teaching and research at the UW (more details in the Principles & Rubric for Subscription Review).

To provide feedback on the UW Libraries' non-health sciences subscriptions, please see the Subscription Review 2021 (FY22) guide; the UW Libraries' list of titles differs in that they are asking for feedback on the titles they propose cancelling. The Health Sciences Library is first asking for your feedback and then creating a list of titles to cancel based on your feedback.

Why?

Budget constraints.

More details about why:

The Health Sciences Library has been affected by the increasing costs of inflation throughout the 2019-21 budget and by the expected flat or decreased 2021-23 budget. See the UW Libraries' Subscription Review 2020-2021 for more details and updates.

In preparation, Librarians and Libraries staff are providing this list of journal subscriptions to obtain your feedback to determine which journal subscriptions may need to be cancelled. We invite the UW community to explore the list and identify journals you consider essential to your teaching or research. This list is a subset of the UW Libraries' collections related to the Health Sciences Library budget.

Please note that submitting a comment does not guarantee that we will be able to keep the resource. Librarians will evaluate each title based on:

• your feedback,
• their knowledge of the discipline and departments, 
• usage and impact metrics,
• cost, and
• value.

See more details on the Principles & Rubric for Subscription Review webpage.

After reviewing your feedback, the Health Sciences Library Collections Team will use their expertise to determine which journal subscriptions must be cancelled to stay within the budget. This final cancellation list will be communicated via email and on this webpage to the Health Sciences Community this Fall. If a journal you use is on the final cancellation list, we are committed to continuing to work with you to provide an alternative path to access the resources you need.

Who?

The UW health sciences community.

More details about who:

The Health Sciences Library is asking health sciences faculty, students, staff, and researchers across the health sciences community to tell us which journals are necessary for their work. Please browse the list of selected journal subscriptions to provide feedback on cancellations (by either scrolling through the alphabetical list or using Control + F (Mac: Command + F) to find a particular title) and then click on the Submit Feedback link to the right of that title. If you are not sure to which title the list is referring, please click on the journal title's link to see more information in the UW Libraries Search.

When?

Monday, May 3rd through Monday, May 31st, 2021. 

More details about when:

The Health Sciences Library is collecting feedback from the health sciences community Monday, May 3rd, 2021, through Monday, May 31st, 2021. Depending on the feedback received, the Health Sciences Library may request further feedback in Fall. 

In addition to this review period and changes to library collections, the UW Libraries will be evaluating some large interdisciplinary packages throughout this and the next two fiscal years. 

Questions or Feedback Related to this Guide?

If you have questions not answered here or feedback for the guide itself, please submit your question or feedback to the Health Sciences Library here.

Note: For research or reference related questions, please Chat with a Librarian via the Ask Us webpage. 

Database Review 2020-21

Learn more about the 2020-21 Database Subscription Review.