OSU Libraries
Collection Development
Library Evaluation for Category I Proposal
Proposal for the revision of graduate degrees in Economics leading to the Master of
Science and Doctor of Philosophy in Applied Economics and Minor in Business
Economics
Title of Proposal
Agriculture and Resource Economics; Forest Resources; Accounting, Finance and
Information Management; Management, Marketing, and International Business, Public
Health; and Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering
Departments
Agricultural Sciences, Forestry, Business, Health and Human Sciences, and Engineering
Colleges
The subject librarians responsible for collection development in the pertinent curricular
area has assessed whether the existing library collections and services can support the
proposal. Based on this review, the subject librarian concludes that present collections
and services are:
[ ] inadequate to support the proposal (see budget needs below)
[ x ] marginally adequate to support the proposal
[ ] adequate to support the proposal
Estimated funding needed to upgrade collections or services to support the proposal
(details are attached)
Year 1:
Ongoing (annual):
Comments and Recommendations:
Collection is currently adequate, however there is concern is for the libraries ability to
support growth and diversification of collection while maintaining a strong core.
Date Received: -6/25/2006
-Bonnie Avery
Subject Librarian
-Alison Bobal
Subject Librarian
-May Chau
Subject Librarian
-Jeanne Davidson
Subject Librarian
-Margaret Mellinger
Subject Librarian
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Head of Collection Development
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University Librarian
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Oregon State University Libraries Evaluation of the
Collection supporting:
A Revision of Graduate Degrees in Economics leading to the
Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy in
Applied Economics and Minor in Business Economics
This library assessment reviews the monographic and serials collections as
related to "Applied Economics" literature in the areas of agricultural, forest,
transportation, medical, business economic. For core Economic literature
with emphases on: econometrics, industrial organization, and international
economics, see the library evaluation for the Revised Economics program,
which is submitted simultaneously with this assessment.
We compared Oregon State University Libraries monographic collections to
those of the nine U.S. and two international universities listed as providing
PhD degrees in Applied Economics: Auburn, Clemson, Cornell, Mississippi
State, Minnesota, Northeastern, Texas Tech, Western Michigan, Wisconsin,
Waterloo (Canada), and Leuven. We also looked a t collecting levels of the
comparators over the past fifteen years (to see how OSU's collecting has
changed since the first graduate degree was offered in the "old program. In
general we find the monograph collection is adequate to support graduate
work leading to a PhD in Applied Economics assuming; the lack of collecting
strength in some areas can be filled by our consortia1 lending agreements
with other academic libraries in Oregon and Washington included in the
Orbis/Cascade Alliance.
We used ISI-Thompson Journal Citation Report (JCR) list of top titles in
Economics, Forestry, Agricultural Economics & Policy, Health Policy &
Services, and Transportation Science & Technology. Not all of these titles
relate to applied economics, but a n indicator of overall breadth in these
applied areas. The journal collection is strong, however, OSU Libraries lacks
subscriptions to five policy/economics related journals on these subject lists.
Any serial shortcomings require new sources of funding and/or increased
dependence on interlibrary loan (an expense borne by the library directly but
also by the researcher in terms of time).
As a sample measure the breadth, we surveyed the bibliographies of theses
written in partial fulfillment of degrees granted by the OSU Department of
Economics. We selected five (-10%) of the theses written by degree recipients
since 1991. These emphasize the natural resource economic topics, areas
where our collection is strongest. Still, it appears that students need to rely
on other resources (interlibrary loan) for a t least 20% of their cited
references. How this compares to the "norm" for all OSU advanced degrees
remains a question but it serves to underline the expectation that students
(and researchers) i n these areas will need to plan for use of interlibrary loan
andlor secure material on their own from authors. (See: Appendix C)
Access to "grey" (limited circulation reports) literature is noticeable i n these
bibliographies and while much of this can be found via the web, we encourage
faculty to make their own "grey" literature (preprints, contract reports, etc.)
available via the ScholarsArchive@OSU.
In the past several years OSU Libraries has been able to add access to titles
(in economics and applied fields) that it did not previously own by buying into
expensive journal publisher packages. These license agreements have
increased the our commitment to serials in general but created a situation
where to add titles requires either identifying additional fund sources or the
cancellation of titles from the same publisher. I n addition, cancellation caps
written into these agreements limit the degree of flexibility the library has to
respond to change a changing curriculum without incurring costs in the short
run.
As mentioned in the Economics assessment, neither the purchase nor annual
licensed access to data collections would have been addressed by the library
in its original response to the [Applied] Economics graduate degree program
proposal in 1988 but today they are essential to the work of faculty and
graduate students doing PhD level work.
Monographs:
I t is difficult to characterize how OSU Libraries' monograph collecting level
compares with t h a t of the other programs mentioned except to say that it is
somewhere i n the mid-range. We looked a t the collection over the past 1 5
years (1992-2006) a s compared to total collection to see howlif our level of
collecting since the earlier degree program was initiated was comparable to
other institutions. Again these numbers place us in the middle of our
comparators.
OSU is served well by the Library's investment in the OrbisICascades
Alliance whose combined collection i n these areas is substantial. Students
and faculty can order from the collections of all the libraries in the Orbisl
Cascade Alliance through the Summit catalog. University of Oregon,
Portland State University, University of Washington and Washington State
University are some of the larger research libraries represented in the
Summit catalog. Books that are requested through Summit are delivered to
OSU Libraries within three working days.
Engineering). This allows for breadth, but not depth and it is likely that
primary responsibility and a fund code for this program will need to be
negotiated.
Summary:
OSU Libraries collections are adequate to support the Applied Economics
program as proposed. However, we would like to emphasize that the
distributed nature of this program places a communication burden on the
faculty from each department to work with the library to ensure that the
collections we do have meet the needs of students and that new faculty have
access to the journals, books, working papers, and data they need to do the
work of a top-ten land grant institution. We also emphasize the need for
faculty to secure the accessibility of their research findings by actively
participating in the ScholarsArchive@OSU.
Respectfully submitted,
Bonnie Avery, Natural Resources Librarian,
Alison Bobal, Health and Human Performance Librarian
May Chay, Agricultural and Resource Economics Librarian
Jeanne Davidson, Physical Sciences Librarian
Margaret Mellinger, Acting Business Librarian
Oregon State University Libraries
Electronic Access to Journals:
OSU Libraries recent subscriptions to online journal packages, such as
BioONE, Springer, Wiley, and Elsevier have expanded electronic access and
in most cases cover the years 1996 to the present. Helpful for coursework but
less so for research is the full-text access to articles older than 3-12 months
from the array of journals covered by the Library's Ebsco database
subscriptions.
As noted in the Economics proposal, OSU Libraries is considering the
Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress) package. The goal of bepress is to
produce rapidly reviewed, high quality journals, and their low prices are an
appealing alternative to high- priced journals. These attributes are
innovations in the process of scholarly communication and help authors and
libraries, alike. The nine items mentioned in the Economics proposal would
enhance the applied economics program as well.
Datasets
In addition to the points made in the Economics proposal regarding the
importance of datasets, for applied economics the problem has been finding a
way to provide access to data on secured sites using passwords only. The
library current relies on site license agreements that use IP recognition for
authentication. We do not currently have the programming staff time
available to set up single user password access for statistical resources that
would no doubt be useful for students and researchers in this area and in
some cases they have needed to go to other institutions to utilize resources.
Subject-Specific Indexes and Abstracts
In adhtion to the databases mentioned in the library response to the
Economics Proposal, OSU Libraries subscribes to the following databases
that can be useful for identifying applied economics literature, including:
Agricola (1970-date)
CAB Abstracts (1973-date)
Compendex (1970-date)
Global Health (1973-date)
Healthsource Plus (1984-date)
Forest Science (1939-date)
Medline (1966-date)
Science Citation Index (1996-date)
Social Science Citation Index (1999-date)
Subject Librarian Support:
Librarian support for this program as proposed is spread across five librarian
positions (Business/Economics, Natural Resources, Agriculture, Health,
We compared our total holdings for "applied and economic" serials to get a n
idea of where we stand with our comparators:
Applied+Economic*+Periodicals
Number of Titles
1
Institution
Minnesota
94
Cornell
83
Michigan State
56
Auburn
54
Ohio State
50
45
Wisconsin
1 UC Davis
1
44
27
26
Clernson
1 OSU
I
I
I
Mississippi State
Leuven
Northeastern
Antwerp
Texas Tech
Western Michigan
15
12
Interlibrary Loan Activity:
We use Interlibrary Loan (ILL) statistics to gauge the need for new serial
titles. The library pays copyright fees after we have requested articles from
any particular journal more than five times. Once the copyright fees reach a
rate that compares to the subscription costs of the journal, we pursue
subscription.
ILL statistics for Januarv 2004- 2006
I
1
I
- -
Economics of education review.
Journal of economic osvcholoav.
"
Journal of economics & management
strategy.
Journal of forest economics.
1
6
I
6 Blackwell
6 1 On-order
I
$784
$569
---- I
$164
1
Appendix A (four spreadsheets) shows the collecting levels of OSU Libraries,
the OrbislCascades Alliance ("Summit") and our comparators in areas of
emphasis noted for applied economics.
Government Documents:
I t is clear from our sampling of theses t h a t OSU Libraries status as a partial
federal depository for government documents is useful for students and
researchers. Many of the government documents are freely available online
and are represented in the OSU Libraries online catalog. We speculate t h a t
the collecting levels for some of the comparator programs are enhanced by the
designation of "full depository" as well.
Journal Impact FactorlCited Half-Life:
We checked the OSU Libraries journal holdings against journals listed in
Thompson-ISI's Journal Citation Report. The Journal Citation Report
assigns a n "impact factor" providing a means to compare or evaluate a
journal's relative importance in the field. OSU Libraries' currently
subscribes all but five of the journals (with a n economics or policy focus)
identified for:
Agricultural Economics
Forestry
Healthcare policy and services
Transportation
Appendix B provides a listing of journals for these categories and our
holdings.
Appendix A: Monograph Collecting Levels and Comparisons for Economics and Applied Economics
Figure 2:
Figure 3:
Keyword
transportationand cost
transportation and
Keyword econom~cs
transportabon and
Keyword effectiveness
1016
539
2090
1015
1006
496
418
379
810
501
1131
569
334
268
685
424
482
309
870
468
1238
570
na
na
31
6
356
78
412
245
1262
536
427
200
194
120
767
354
704
376
219
97
194
92
514
331
273
154
775
376
na
na
163
56
535
127
190
58
431
159
207
52
35
24
78
46
239
65
39
15
66
35
136
68
115
31
283
64
na
na
12
1
132
21
Subject
Commuting
112
47
587
310
155
70
55
30
285
114
240
117
52
26
68
36
144
78
91
37
325
144
na
na
15
4
178
62
Subject
Delivery of Goods
13
5
100
37
32
14
14
13
123
33
76
24
13
10
11
5
30
19
19
14
79
21
na
na
19
7
29
13
Subject
Fre~ghtand fre~ghtage
223
75
880
244
326
73
112
69
574
135
487
128
137
25
186
92
221
82
158
69
449
145
na
na
40
18
238
60
Subject
Med~calEconomics
394
168
1117
446
438
145
253
127
832
345
792
252
181
78
382
188
400
169
424
167
624
206
na
na
77
27
633
214
21
18
51
42
24
16
8
7
17
15
37
32
15
8
16
11
22
19
17
12
36
14
na
na
0
0
30
12
162
3366
621
1373
322
558
na
87
930
110
Subject
Rural Transportation
Subject
Shipping
706
336
184
2795
644
2140
423
405
127
389
117
664
163
740
298
2159
na
362
Figure: 4
Summit collection size as percent of peer
296%
Summit 17 year acquisitions as percent of peer
896%
313%
I
113%
541%
155%
106%
687%
134%
1271%
723%
416%
824%
575%
326%
na
93%
428%
92%
2109%
na
237%
1724%
272%
Appendix B: OSU Holdings of Top Twenty Journals (by impact
factor) i n JCR's economics and applied economics related
categories.
Figure 1 : Economics
Rank Abbreviated Journal Title
1
IQJECON
ISSN
10033-5533
1
Impact
Factor
OSU holdings
I
4.7751 V.l (1886) to present
I
1 2
J ECON LIT
4.054
V.7 (1969) to present
Not held
3
J ECON GEOGR
1468-2702
3.222
:
1
4
I J HEALTH ECON
10167-6296
1
2.708 1 V.l (1982) to present 1
'
5
J ECON PERSPECT
P
J FINANC ECON
8
I
-
9
P
-
9
/
2.634
/
2.577
1
J POLlT ECON
10
1 BROOKINGS PAP ECO AC 0007-2303 1
11
J RISK UNCERT
12
REV ECON STUD
13
14
'
HEALTH ECON
1 J ACCOUNT ECON
15 /AM ECON REV
r
4
2.385 V.15 (1995) to present
0304-405X
0034-6527
1
V.2 (1997) to presenq
'
2.245
2.1 18
I
r-
V.l (1987) to present
I
1
/ 1057-9230 1
10165-4101 1
1
V.l (1892) to
1970 to present
2.035 V. 1 (1933) to present
1.919
1
V. 6 (1997) to present
1
1
1
1.877 V. 19 (1995) to present 1
10002-8282 ( 1.806
1
V.l (191 1) to present
16
ECOlV GEOGR
0013-0095
1.757
v. 1 (1923) to present
17
JINTECON
0022-1996
1.667
V.l (1971) to present]
18
IJ MONETARY ECON
10304-3932 1 1.661 1 V. 8 (1980) to present 1
20
IJ ECONOMETRICS
10304-4076
I
'
1
1
1.579 V. 7 (1978) to present
1
Figure 2: Agricultural Economics
Figure 3: Forestry
Figure 4: Healthcare Policy and Services
Figure 5: Transportation Science
Appendix C: Support for Graduate Thesis preparation
\\Cn-share\library\CollDev\Category I-Course Proposals\Economics\Revisiongraduate degrees applied economics.doc