The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), US, conducted a survey to determine what major factors contribute to journal cancellations and answer the question of whether or not author self-archiving of journal articles is likely to be one of those factors.

Some of the findings:

• Repositories are clearly not seen by librarians as a substitute for properly managed journal holdings
• The large majority of librarians do not know whether the content of archives overlaps with their holdings, and most do not plan to introduce systems to measure this.
• Availablility of OA archives was ranked a long way behind the needs of faculty, usage, and price in determining cancellations
• Three times as many respondents thought repositories would have no impact on holdings as thought they would
• 54 percent say that availablity of via OA archives is an important, or a very important factor in determining cancellations now, and 81 percent think it will be come important or very important in the next 5 years.
• The clear and growing emphasis on measuring usage of journals via the publishers' or intermediaries' statistics will be a concern for publishers, because there is some evidence (e.g. from physics and mathemetics) that usage may migrate from the publisher's site to the archive.

I have one question....How can the availablitly of OA archives rank waay behind the needs of faculty, usage, and price when determining cancellations, YET 54% of those surveyed say that OA availability is an important, or very important, factor when determining cancellations now!?!?! Does that mean that faculty needs, usage, and price are super important?

The full 72 page ALPSP report can be found and bought at http://www.alpsp.org/publications/pub12.htm
ALPSP members 45 pounds/$80/100 euros per copy
non-ALPSP member 90 pounds/$160/200 euros per copy

The "free-text'" answers from respondents of the survey can be seen at http://www.surveymonkey.com/Report.asp?U=161585570142