To the Editor:

I read with great interest the article by Stuart Lyman about industry access to the literature1. But I would like to point out that at least two of his solutions are unlikely to be feasible.

As Lyman notes, the problem of lack of access is most acute for small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). As multinational pharmaceutical corporations scale back their own R&D operations2, it is becoming clear that they are also cutting back on subscriptions to biomedical journals. Thus, Lyman's suggestion1 that biotech SMEs could negotiate online access to big pharma's electronic subscriptions as part of research-collaboration deals seems unlikely to work.

Another solution proposed by Lyman1 is to form some type of cooperative or consortium that would buy journal access. However, certain publishers now sell access to journals as bundles—forcing libraries to pay for access to more prominent and highly used journals as well as to journals consulted far less frequently. This has substantial implications for librarians; for example, the cost of electronic-journal subscriptions for the Consortium of Swiss Academic Libraries doubled in 2011, owing to a bundled subscription with Elsevier3. And in April 2012, the Harvard Library warned its faculty and students that it could no longer afford the high prices of journal subscriptions and called for specific actions4.

Yet another development threatening access to the literature relates to the destruction at some big pharma facilities of physical collections of journals that were issued decades ago (that is, before 1980). Many of these journals, especially in the field of chemistry, have still not been made electronically available. And yet, the information in these journals continues to be valid and useful for present-day research.