A method for journal collection management and the limitations of reality

Abstract

Academic libraries are constantly facing new challenges, which require as much time and money as other processes to be more effective. A big part of the media budget is spent on licensing (electronic) journals. Even though libraries invest a lot of time in selection processes of journals, it is still not possible to combine the data (like statistics or JIF) of the different actors of scholarly communication in a multidimensional model and to produce a balanced base for decision making. This work shows the requirements of such a model and explains, which deficits exist at present and why the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a suitable method for the selection process of (e)journals.