August 8, 2018 Meeting of Life Sciences

1. Approval of 5/9 minutes (taken by Melody)
2. Collections discussion
   1. Update on new Nature journal titles
   2. Open discussion on funding/support (e.g., endowment funds, vouchers, discounts) to help faculty publish in open access journals
3. College of Medicine update – Kelli, Erin, Peg, Ryan
4. Committee assignments and reports – AC, CDC, others
5. Round Table
6. Adjourn

1. Minutes of 2018-05-09 meeting (submitted by Melody) approved.
2. Collections discussion
   1. Update on new Nature journal titles – A few titles had been acquired title by title (one Medical, and Ecology and Evolution), but several additional titles had appeared in SFX. Sarah inquired, and Tom Teper reported that the package and inflation cap offered by Springer/Nature was lower than the combined cost for individual titles selected, so the package was purchased instead.  Decision may not have been communicated to CDC or the Divisions.  The package option was discussed extensively at CDC, with a consensus that the package was not wanted.  Two titles are being paid for by Kelli, according to fund reports.  Package appears to be funded using funds committed by selectors for individual titles or using sweep of year end funds.  There is a concern that this eliminates the selectors’ option to cancel individual titles, and the contribution of their funds may be permanently committed to the package.  Some question as to whether the commitment to pay for the package is for 1 or 3 years.  Any additional titles purchased during the 3-yr agreement will have the agreed upon inflation cap.  Sarah will follow up to determine whether 1 or 3 year commitment.[i]
   2. Open discussion on funding/support (e.g., endowment funds, vouchers, discounts) to help faculty publish in open access journals:
      Some important questions: What do we know about demand?  What do we know about the overall cost to the institution of switch to OA vs. subscription based publication?
      Some information was being gathered about memberships that might include vouchers or discounts based on memberships in the Scholarly Communications and Publishing unit, but that unit is now in transition.  Because we subscribe via EBSCO, publishers often don’t recognize we are members or subscribed, even if we know about the discounts.  It appears to be up to selector to know, but selector may not always be informed if a patron asked.  There have been instances of incorrect or incomplete information being given without referring to the appropriate selector. Challenge is that deals are so changeable, they can be difficult to track.  It was suggested that researching this could be a good practicum project.  Potentially important because the campus does have an OA policy.
      1. Grant funding for OA publishing from Ithaka study is low, and takes away from other costs. U MInn has an OA fund, but they have had to modify it over time. Was up to 50% or up to $1000 for hybrid OA journals.  No longer support hybrid OA journals.
      2. Dryad vouchers were purchased for Dryad deposit, but we had to limit to one per person per year.
      3. Needs to be a conversation for a library working group, not just the sciences.
      4. May make more sense as a campus wide program like the travel fund.
      5. Some known instances
         1. RSC gives Voucher.
         2. BMC titles all offer a 15% discount, and BMC automatically applies the discount based on your IP address if within our range.
         3. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development converted to OA, but you buy shares in the journal to sustain it, and authors at the institution do not have to pay the $500APC to publish in the journal.  We had formerly had a sub, and it was cancelled, but Sarah was able to reinstate purchase of a share.  Cancelling titles that convert to OA means that UI authors won’t benefit
      6. Conclusion: Keep this on the back burner for now, but give a heads up to others when we are aware of deals available to authors through memberships/subscriptions.

3. College of Medicine update – Kelli, Erin, Peg, Ryan
   Ryan shared update via email, including that MSB closed to the public June 15 and he and nursing collection is now housed in Grainger. Peg has moved to recently remodeled Everett Lab, along with some of the facilitators for the Medical students.  Students also there most days.  Books challenging because some only available in print, even with multiple copies there are still access problems.  Putting them on reserve at Grainger doesn’t provide students the access they need.  Peg is creating a small collection in her office (CI Med non-circ) from which Med School students and faculty can borrow them.  There are 32 students.  There have been some last minute requests from faculty for materials needed for the next week’s lecture.  Alex Cabada will be the new engineering librarian, and he’ll be at Grainger.  Medical Sci building (adjacent to Morrill) will have 2 librarian offices when it is completed. UIC hasn’t publicized that the library is now closed.  UIC library nursing items now at Grainger aren’t circulating as UIUC items.  Medical materials from the UIC collection are at Carle hospital library.  Newly purchased circulating materials from the medical fund will be housed at Grainger, which is Dewey–Peg would prefer new purchases cataloged LC or NLM.
4. Committee assignments and reports – AC, CDC, others
   1. AC hasn’t met since April.
   2. CDC – Budget in good shape for FY19, >100K set aside for FY20.
      Preprinted labels are coming for property stamps, instead of stamping books.  Because no student workers in Acq anymore.  They’ll print them.
   3. Peg will be Library Faculty Secretary in August
5. Round Table
   1. Peg on HSLI meeting planning committee.  Continuing Education presentation on online professional identity run by Peg and Erin.
   2. New Catalog:  SFX links are still targeting VuFind 2.0, as is EasySearch
      Full text options are going to “not found” for catalog (from WoS)
      Biological Abstracts has no discover links (looks like this just for direct links to Database instead of the SFX link to the database)
   3. Planning Funk event for spring 2019 on Ecological diversity
   4. Displays for Funk are booked through the end of Fall, be thinking about next year’s displays.
   5. New Endnote will be available soon in WebStore.
6. Meeting adjourned at 12:02.

[i] Confirmation from Wendy on 2018-08-10 is that the commitment to subscribe to the package is 3 years, and the first year was covered by funds already committed to pay for specific titles