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The purpose of the paper is to present the influence open access initiatives (OAIs) have on journal cancellations in university libraries in South Africa.

The paper is based on part of a doctoral research project which examined the crisis in scholarly communication and its effect on university libraries in South Africa that was carried out at the University of KwaZulu-Natal from 2005 to 2009. Part of the investigation focused on open access (OA) and how it influenced journal cancellations. The survey methodology was adopted and the study used a quantitative approach to collect data on the influence of OA.

The findings revealed that OAIs had a very limited influence on journal cancellations in South African university libraries.

The study presents data that can be used by university libraries to develop, support and facilitate access to local research.

The study provides data on which future developments in OA as a solution to university library journal cancellations could be based.

The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of exchange rates of foreign currencies on the material budget in the libraries in India.

A sample of journals costing in foreign currency was selected for the purpose of study. A comparison of inflation rate pertaining to serial price is done with the general rate of inflation in India.

The paper finds that exchange rates of foreign currencies have extensive impact on the acquisitions budget of the libraries in India.

Academic institutions may protect the buying powers of the libraries while allocating funds, keeping in mind the strengthening or weakening of Indian Rupee in comparison to foreign currencies.

This is one of the comprehensive studies on the impact of foreign exchange on subscription in Indian libraries system.

This paper aims to examine the reasons for the high costs of scholarly journals.

A brief review of the literature on journal publishing costs is carried out. The paper focuses on the economics of scholarly English language journals published mainly in the USA and Europe, but which are sold worldwide, largely to academic and research libraries.

Journal literature has long played a prominent role in the scholarly communication chain. In recent decades, however, the scholarly communication system has been facing a crisis due to the ever‐escalating costs of journals. Two of the features of the journal publishing industry cited a decade ago and still valid today are a lack of competition and perverse incentives. “First‐copy cost” is reported to be the main reason for high journal prices both in print and electronic publishing.

The paper provides a useful overview to researchers and document supply librarians, enabling them to achieve quickly a clear picture of journal publishing industry costs.

Librarians are finding it increasingly difficult to acquire and to make available to their users the full range of information in print form that they require. Electronic information products and services are appearing at a rapidly increasing rate. Users find them attractive and, when available, use them more heavily than print sources. Consequently, librarians in response to the demands of users, and overwhelmed by the problems posed by print publications, are attempting to make electronic sources available. This paper describes the nature of the problems posed by print publications and trends involving the use of electronic documents in libraries. It discusses the progress made toward introducing electronic documents as alternatives, and complements, to print collections. It also describes a study that the IFLA Information Technology Section is undertaking to assess how rapidly libraries are adopting alternatives to locally held, print sources.

This study aims to investigate the amount and direction of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) spillover among six emerging market economies (EMEs), and to also ascertain arguments on the increased volatilities of uncertainty in most EMEs.

This study adopts a recent methodology developed by Baruník and Krehlík’s (2018) methodology to measure pairwise, composite and net spillover. This methodology helps investigate the size and direction of EPU spillover in EMEs. The unique feature of this methodology is its ability to capture frequency domain as well as time-frequency dynamics.

Inter-country static spillover connectedness among the EPU of the selected EMEs show that Korea-EPU is the main transmitter and recipient of spillover shocks among the EMEs across all frequency bands. The findings from this study also show evidence of spillover between EPU, GDP and SPX across the EMEs. The time-varying total spillover index analysis shows evidence of overall connectedness across the selected EMEs. Overall connectedness is highest in the short term. We document that global economic and financial events intensify the volatility of the total spillover across the selected EMEs.

This study extends the literature on studies conducted on EMEs as studies on EPU spillover has mainly focused on advanced economies. To address the limitation of previous empirical studies that were unable to address the amount and direction of spillover from a country to other countries, this study offers new insight on country-specific spillover amounts and causal patterns “to” and “from” the selected EMEs. The findings throw more light on the network connectedness across EMEs and hence aids investors to undertake precise investment decisions and intelligently plan their portfolio diversification strategies. We then introduce two new variables to the analysis and record evidence of high connectedness between EPU, gross domestic product and share price index in all the frequency bands.

The paper seeks to reconsider open access and its relation to issues of “development” by highlighting the ties the open access movement has with the hegemonic discourse of development and to question some of the assumptions about science and scientific communication upon which the open access debates are based. The paper also aims to bring out the conflict arising from the convergence of the hegemonic discourses of science and development with the contemporary discourse of openness.

The paper takes the form of a critical reading of a range of published work on open access and the so‐called “developing world” as well as of various open access declarations. The argument is supported by insights from post‐development studies.

Open access is presented as an issue of moral concern beyond the narrow scope of scholarly communication. Claims are made based on hegemonic discourses that are positioned as a priori and universal. The construction of open access as an issue of unquestionable moral necessity also impedes the problematisation of its own heritage.

This paper is intended to open up the view for open access's less obvious alliances and conflicting discursive ties and thus to initiate a politisation, which is necessary in order to further the debate in a more fruitful way.