LISNews: Librarian Blog Since 1999

'For instance, for the last few months, I have not been able to access the Elsevier journals Cell or Neuron. '

Have they tried asking a librarian why?

I can guess the online subscription costs to an institition with around 35,000 staff and students would be pretty high. But there could be many reasons why it's not working. They don't actually say if they know why. Maybe they need tpo

Using impact factors for deciding journals? If you only did that you'd only end up with the top journals, not the individual, niche journals that many scientists and researchers need access to. And also if you just went by impact factor you could be buying journals that aren't required by people, that you don't cover that subject!
Impact factors are surely just one of the few things you use, pure cost ,demand/requests, Cost/benefit analysis of ILL's vs subscription costs, analysis of usage statistics for previous years etc all contribute to the ideas.
In my small library for instance I'd love to get rid of Nature. It's a general science magazine, not something specifically useful to our department and if I really needed a copy I could walk to Borders and buy a copy. But the boss wants it, and indeed now wants online access to it as well.
His decision so thats fine.