In an effort to save money, MSU's libraries could stop subscribing to materials students use for research papers because of a drastic increase in the price of literary journals.
This could make it difficult for students to get the information they need to pull that all-nighter.
Commercial publishers that produce these journals have raised the prices of subscriptions, according to the MSU Libraries, Computing and Technology department. As a result, university libraries nationwide are having to cut the number of journal subscriptions purchased.
"The fundamental problem is the price of journals, specifically electronic journals, has been rising higher than that of inflation," said David Gift, vice provost of MSU's libraries.
Gift said the increasing prices affect all journals, but electronic materials found online are more accessible and convenient.
"Electronic gets more attention because of the amount of electronic journals we have and the amount of these journals continues to go up," Gift said.
"These journals can be used at home, save the hassle of sitting at the library and using them. So electronic-based journals are very important at a university."
Karla Hahn, director of the Office of Scholarly Communications for the Association of Research Libraries, said she also saw an importance in these journals.
"Over a time period, a trend we are beginning to see is that (subscriptions bought) are taking up a larger and larger portion of our library's budgets," Hahn said. "Libraries are increasingly moving toward buying more journals."
Hahn said a reason for the subscription price increasing is because of inflation, but Gift said there might be another factor.
"The publishers say it is an expensive business, but the supply side has been highly consolidated," Gift said. "Two of the publishers own 80 to 90 percent of the publishing houses that sell these subscriptions. It is very close to a monopoly."
This is a problem for libraries, but it becomes even more of a problem for scholars trying to get their work published in journals.
Robert Hitchcock, an anthropology professor and his department's chairman, said this becomes a problem for all departments, not just his.
"This is a critical issue because we are trying to get the information out there," Hitchcock said. "About a third of our faculty is putting their work into journals. This is not quite as much as say, a humanitarian department like English, but still quite a bit."
Richard Hula, a political science professor and his department's chairman, said this could become a problem for students as well, especially if they need to read the material.
"When a faculty member wants a student to read something for a class like a journal, it could become a problem if that student was unable to attain access to that material because it was not available at our libraries," Hula said.
