The Library is currently reviewing several of its biggest journal vendor contracts (often called “Big Deals”) to assess whether they provide good value and represent a sustainable part of our overall investment in information on behalf of the University. We want to ensure that our spending commitments are aligned with community needs, and that we are being responsible stewards of our budget in an evolving information landscape. As part of this review, we are assembling, evaluating, and sharing some important data about cost, usage, and growth trends for our biggest commitments.
- What are Big Deals and why have libraries supported them in the past?
- Big Deals are multi-year journal bundle contracts sold by several major vendors (Elsevier and SpringerNature, for example) that provide access to all or nearly all of a vendor’s journal content for a bundle price that grows at a fixed annual rate for the life of the contract. Predictable annual cost increases and reduced staffing costs made these deals attractive in the past.
- Why are some libraries breaking up Big Deals?
- The growth in serials cost has outpaced inflation and the growth of most library budgets, including ours. Through mergers and acquisitions, a few oligopolies now dominate scholarly publishing. Thanks to these trends, library collections budgets go increasingly and disproportionately to supporting Big Deals. They have steadily crowded out competing journals, books, databases, and other resources. Some libraries have been forced to break up Big Deals because their budgets simply cannot accommodate them any longer. Others see unsustainable trends in cost and are trying to adjust their budget priorities before things come to a point of crisis. Trends favoring free open access to scholarship, including more robust funder policies and increasingly powerful tools for finding free legal versions of articles, have also helped lower the barrier to breaking up Big Deals.
- Can I still (legally) access journal articles if the Library cancels a journal subscription?
- Yes, a wide and growing array of tools and services makes it possible to access research legally without a subscription. In many cases the Library will retain access to subscribed content from before the date of cancellation. We also obtain access to some journal content through third-party aggregators. Interlibrary Loan technology has vastly improved, making loans faster and cheaper, and new tools like OAButton can find free legal versions of articles on the open web. Finally, individual articles can be purchased a la carte and delivered instantly.
As the Library releases cost and use data alongside information about local and national trends, we hope to start a conversation about the future of our investments in Big Deals.
Learn more from 'No Big Deal?', a collection of news about big journal bundles and strategic budget choices facing libraries.