Scholarly Communication : a case study of the collection management of a Swedish research library

For hundreds of years the scientific journals has been the foremost tool for scholarly communication. Publishing of research results is very important for scientists. Often the research is bound to the university and the research libraries supplies the scientist with all journals needed. The last decades the libraries have seen the costs for subscriptions to journals explode. Commercial publishers often lie behind the mostly unmotivated escalation in price. The purpose of the study has been to analyse which strategies a Swedish research library has to meet this changes in journal costs and electronic development, and also to analyse the development of alternative scientific publishing. We tried to find the answer to these four questions:If you look at scientific journals, what consequences has the last years of economic and electronic development done to the strategies the library has got for collection management?How does the library work with collection management of scientific publications?How do the library weigh different publications and forms of publications (monographs, e-journals and paper journals) against each other?Do the library develop new forms for scientific publishing?The case study shows that the library has developed several different strategies to meet the changes within the formal scientific communication. The libraries have been heavily affected due to the rising expenses. The consequences has been cancellation of subscriptions and lowered grants for monographs. To meet the changes the university has, the last years, developed an own model for publishing scientific publications produced by the researchers at the university. Our conclusion is that the lowered economic resources due to rising subscription fees affects the library negatively and that many of the strategies the library has developed to meet the changes within scientific publishing aims to set free resources or in many cases set free means to finance the journal collection. We believe that the university is on the right track when developing an own model for publication. We also believe that co-operation with other universities have to increase. The communication inside the university will have to improve to raise the knowledge for the role of the library in the university of the future. A possible future role that would strengthen the library's position within the university is to be responsible for the university's scientific publication. To accomplish this more co-operation and communication is needed between library and university.Uppsatsnivå: