MétaCan
Menu
Back to cohort
Record W1889966147 · doi:10.18438/b8rs3n

Print Books are Cheaper than E-Books for Academic Libraries

2015· article· en· W1889966147 on OpenAlexaffvenue
Laura Newton Miller

Bibliographic record

VenueEvidence Based Library and Information Practice · 2015
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldComputer Science
TopicLibrary Collection Development and Digital Resources
Canadian institutionsCarleton University
Fundersnot available
KeywordsLibrary scienceElectronic bookComputer science

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

A Review of: Bailey, T. P., Scott, A. L., & Best, R. D. (2015). Cost differentials between e-books and print in academic libraries. College & Research Libraries, 76(1), 6-18. doi: 10.5860/crl.76.1.2 Abstract Objective – To determine the difference in cost (if any) between print and e-book titles for an academic library. Design – Case study. Setting – Library system of a small, regional university in the southern United States of America. Subjects – 264 titles requested by faculty (out of 462 total requests) that were available in both print and electronic format. Method – Using Baker & Taylor’s Title Source 3 (now Title Source 360), the researchers compared pricing between the print version (paperback preferred) and electronic version (single user only) of titles requested by faculty during the Fall 2012 semester. Main Results – As a whole, print titles had a mean price of $53.50 and electronic equivalent titles had a mean price of $73.50 (a $19.17 difference). Only 44 of the 264 e-book titles were less expensive than their print equivalents. When broken down by LC classification, e-books were generally more expensive than print across all subjects except for religion and philosophy (BJ-BY) and the social sciences (H-HV). Average prices for both print and electronic were cheaper for university press publications versus non-university press publications. (This was true for both arithmetic and weighted means.) Humanities books were the least expensive (mean cost/print title), but the average e-book cost was slightly higher than the social sciences. Science books were most expensive (average) both in print and electronic. Conclusion – On average, print books are cheaper than e-books for academic libraries.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.003
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.022
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesScholarly communication
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.981
Threshold uncertainty score0.769

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0030.022
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.001
Bibliometrics0.0040.010
Science and technology studies0.0020.002
Scholarly communication0.0190.014
Open science0.0010.003
Research integrity0.0020.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.2300.068

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.040
GPT teacher head0.256
Teacher spread0.216 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations1
Published2015
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

Explore more

Same venueEvidence Based Library and Information PracticeSame topicLibrary Collection Development and Digital ResourcesFrench-language works237,207