The economics of access versus ownership: The Library for Natural Sciences, Russian Academy of Sciences Available to Purchase

This article applies the economic model of interlibrary loan and library journal subscriptions developed by Kingma in 1996 to data from the Library for Natural Sciences, Russian Academy of Sciences. The model shows whether a library journal subscription or providing access to journal articles by interlibrary loan is more cost‐effective. The cost of international interlibrary loan including document delivery and the journal subscription policies to foreign periodicals existing in a large academic library in Russia are examined. Results are similar to the results found in the Kingma study of the Library Centres for the State University of New York. The most cost‐effective way to provide access to scientific journal articles within Russia is to provide additional funding for international interlibrary loan rather than increasing the number of journal subscriptions.