Officials reduced academic journal subscription costs at GW Libraries & Academic Innovation by 6 percent and at Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library by 10 percent as part of fiscal year 2026 budget cuts, LAI Dean Geneva Henry confirmed Friday.
Henry said GW Libraries canceled some “highly used” subscriptions and is now relying on the interlibrary loan system, leveraging open access content and utilizing its partnerships and affiliations to connect community members to scholarly resources. She said librarians launched a qualitative assessment in August 2025 of their online subscriptions, considering factors like its relevance to curriculum and research, overlap or comparison with other databases or resources and the impact of their cancellation.
“The exorbitant cost of annual journal subscriptions is a long-term problem that will continue to strain the budgets of research universities world-wide,” Henry said in an email.
Henry did not say how many journal subscriptions officials reduced as a result of the budget reductions, and GW Libraries’ webpage outlining the cuts does not specify which subscriptions officials let go.
The webpage says officials expected the price of general subscriptions to increase by 5.5 to 6.5 percent, and health sciences journals to increase by 6 to 8 percent in 2026. Those price hikes come as GW’s library budgets have remained “flat” over the last decade, and staffing levels have decreased due to turnover and staff retention issues, LAI’s webpage says.
GW’s cuts to library journal subscriptions are part of officials’ plan to slash the University’s budget by 3 percent this fiscal year, which has prompted officials to implement a series of cuts to campus operations, programs and resources, ranging from halting the School of Business’ peer mentorship program to laying off 43 staff members in September.
Officials last reported that the University’s structural deficit stood at $24 million as of July, and officials have not provided an updated number since. Officials told the Faculty Senate in December they expect GW to operate at or near breakeven in FY2026 after operating expenses exceeded revenue by $75 million in FY2025.
GW LAI’s webpage states librarians could not rely solely on usage data to make cuts to subscriptions, adding that they had to cancel access to resources that were popular, though they don’t specify which.
It also states librarians underwent a comprehensive review of their online subscriptions, and Himmelfarb Library evaluated how specific resources supported health sciences research, learning and patient care, along with input from departments and schools and an analysis of cost and usage data. Resources with low overall annual usage or had a high cost per use were targeted for the cuts, per the webpage.
Henry said GW’s newly approved open-access policy, which gives GW Libraries permission to post faculty, librarian and postdoctoral student research online for free, will allow the University to join a community of academic institutions working to broaden access to research results and reduce reliance on expensive, subscription-based journals.
The new University policy officials published Tuesday is part of a longstanding effort to widen public access to GW scholarship.
Katherine Puskarz, a member of the Faculty Senate Standing Committee on Libraries, said during her committee update to the Staff Council in November that library officials were looking to cancel academic journal subscriptions with low usage as part of their budget cuts, rather than cutting library staff.
“For comparison, the journals that we get through Elsevier, what we pay annually is what the cost of a seven-acre private island in Belize costs,” Puskarz said. “It’s stupid expensive.”
