ART: Black, An assessment of social sciences coverage by four prominent full-text online aggregated journal packages

[Gretchen Whitney]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 10:10:58 -0500
From: Steve Black <blacks at mail.strose.edu>
Subject: RE: "An assessment of social sciences coverage by four prominent
    full-text online aggregated journal packages" Lib. Collections Acquisitio
    ns & Technical Services 23(4). p.411-419, Winter 1999


        The readers of SIGMETRICS may be interested in my article, "An Assessment
of Social Sciences Coverage by Four Prominent Full-Text Online Aggregated
Journal Packages" in Library Collections, Acquisitions, and Technical
Services, Vol. 23, No. 4, pp. 411-419, 1999.  I especially hope that someone
will replicate the study with updated data.  This study is from 1996 data.
The content of the packages has changed since then, as have prices and
impact factors.  Unfortunately, I am not able to repeat the study at this
time.

SUMMARY OF ARTICLE

        The cost effectiveness and quality of full-text journals are analyzed for
four prominent online aggregated journal packages: EBSCOhost Academic Search
FullTEXT, UMI Proquest Direct Periodicals Research II, IAC’s Expanded
Academic ASAP, and H.W. Wilson’s OmniFile.  Price data from EBSCO’s
Librarians’ Handbook are used to assess the total, average, and median value
of social sciences journals in each package. Quality of social sciences
journals coverage is compared based on citation impact factors as recorded
in Journal Citation Reports—Social Sciences Edition.

        This comparative analysis suggests that the UMI package has the highest
quality journals, followed very closely by IAC. The journals in EBSCO’s
package are of slightly lower quality as measured by impact factor, but are
still close in quality to UMI and IAC. The Wilson OmniFile has fewer
full-text social sciences journals, and trails the other packages in average
impact factor and average prices. But except for the much lower number and
prices of full-text social sciences journals found in the Wilson OmniFile,
the differences among packages are not dramatic. The average impact factors
of full-text journals in each package fall within .24 standard deviation of
the mean for all journals in SSCI. Given the many factors that should be
considered in selecting access to online journals, variation in prices and
impact factors for full-text journals may not deserve to be the dominant
selection factors, at least not for these four packages.

Data from tables in the full article:
(IMPORTANT:  These figures come from 1996 data.)

        Number of full-text journals indexed in SSCI
JCR—Social Sciences     1513
WilsonWeb OmniFile      108
IAC Expanded Academic ASAP      210
EBSCOhost Academic Search FullTEXT Elite        234
UMI Periodical Research II      228

        Subscription price of journals indexed in SSCI
JCR—Social Sciences     $321,278
WilsonWeb OmniFile      $11,600
IAC Expanded Academic ASAP      $30,398
EBSCOhost Academic Search FullTEXT Elite        $32,147
UMI Periodical Research II      $29,427

        Average price of journals indexed in SSCI
JCR—Social Sciences     $230.80
WilsonWeb OmniFile      $107.41
IAC Expanded Academic ASAP      $146.20
EBSCOhost Academic Search FullTEXT Elite        $137.38
UMI Periodical Research II      $129.07

Average impact factor of journals indexed in SSCI
JCR—Social Sciences     0.758
WilsonWeb OmniFile      0.697
IAC Expanded Academic ASAP      0.894
EBSCOhost Academic Search FullTEXT Elite        0.729
UMI Periodical Research II      0.9353

        Please refer to the full article for much more detail.  Again, I dearly
hope someone can devote the time to replicate this study with 2000 data.

Thank you for your interest,

Steve Black
Reference, Instruction, and Serials Librarian
Neil Hellman Library
The College of Saint Rose
392 Western Ave.
Albany, NY 12203
(518) 548-5494
blacks at mail.strose.edu