STM publisher Springer, Germany, recently commissioned a report from US-based research and advisory firm Outsell. The report, titled ‘Establishing Value and ROI: Investing in STM E-Journals and E-Books’ , seeks to provide guidance for information managers looking to establish the value proposition for STM content in electronic formats.
One of the top issues for libraries and information centres today is assessing and demonstrating the value of information, especially in challenging economic times. Feedbacks imply that while libraries are keen to measure return on investment (ROI) and demonstrate the value of information, they struggle to collate appropriate metrics. Usage is often a proxy for value, with purchase and renewal decisions based on user volume, usage activity and costs per download.
Electronic formats have reportedly made the compilation of baseline data easier in many respects. However, the proliferation of e-content options poses new challenges. Increased choices – business models, access models, providers and formats – are reportedly making it more difficult to ascertain appropriate comparative benchmarks for e-books and e-journals.
While the specifics of the study relate to special libraries, several of the report's findings are seen to reflect what researchers of academic library usage have found. The study includes a survey of 573 end-users in corporate settings, and in-depth interviews with three large corporate libraries and a government research and engineering laboratory.
Across a broad group of R&D and technical end-users surveyed, e-content was found to be increasingly relied upon. The right source and type of information was seen to be essential to users now actively searching for the required information on a daily basis. The majority of end-users surveyed reported a heavy reliance upon STM content; an average time savings of 2-4 hours per user per occasion; associated cost savings in the form of faster information identification and elimination of redundant work; and a clear role for e-content in effectively supporting business decisions such as technologies to pursue and projects to select.
The report notes that as budget pressures push executive and stakeholder scrutiny to new levels, librarians will be challenged to define and establish the contribution of information and information services to business success. With few standardised approaches to the enterprise level ROI assessment, libraries will reportedly benefit from leveraging supporting partners - and striving to create their own consistent procedures - to identify, size and communicate the business impacts of information investment and usage. As options for e-journals and e-books continue to multiply, information managers will want to understand and establish their own business cases for reaping the benefits, says the report.
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