An Observational Study on the Key Research Databases to Which Academic Health Sciences Libraries in North America Subscribe and Provide Access to Their Served Communities

Objectives: Research databases index scholarly outputs (e.g., peer-reviewed articles, books) and provide search functions to users for information retrieval are essential resources for the services that academic health sciences libraries (AHSLs) provide to support education, practice, and research, including systematic reviews and bibliometric analysis. However, research databases have become increasingly expensive, challenging the shrinking budget of AHSLs. This study aimed to survey the key research databases that AHSLs currently subscribe to and provide insights to both librarians and library administrators in terms of database subscription patterns and strategies for informed decision-making in dealing with database cancellations.

Methods: The authors conducted an observational study from September 1st to 20th, 2021 by manually checking the webpage of research databases A-Z on AHSL websites. A complete member list of AHSLs was obtained from the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL) website. L. The majority of examined research databases are essential for comprehensive literature searching services like systematic review and bibliometric services, including Web of Science (WoS) core collection, WoS other products (i.e., Journal citation reports, InCites analytics, InCites Essential Citation Index, & Derwent Index), Scopus, Elsevier SciVal, Dimensions, Ovid Medline, UptoDate, ACM Digital Library, and IEEE Xplore. A descriptive analysis was performed to summarize all findings.

Results: A total of 163 AAHSL member libraries in the United States and Cananda were included in data analysis. During the examined period, 47.3% (77/163) of these libraries had subscriptions to both WoS (core collection) and Scopus providing access to their own affiliates. Particularly, the percentage of libraries having a subscription to WoS (77.3%) is higher than the libraries with a subscription to Scopus (61%). Regarding WoS other products, 122 libraries had subscriptions to Journal Citation Reports, 15 libraries had InCites Analytics, 64 libraries had InCites Essential Citation Index, and 45 libraries had Derwent Index. Among the 99 libraries with a Scopus subscription, some of them also had Scival (13) and Pure (3). Twenty libraries listed Dimensions on their webpage, but only four of them indicated that they had the commercial version. About 83% libraries (113) subscribed to Ovid Medline and UpToDate. Approximately 52.1% libraries (85/163) had both ACM Digital Library and IEEE Explore. However, more libraries subscribed to IEEE Xplore (96/163) than ACM Digital Library (92/163).

Conclusions: Research databases are the most important resources for health sciences or medical libraries to provide core services. Our survey results will help libraries with database selection and collaboration strategies across institutions.