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W(h)ither the big dealIs e-journal purchase about to fragment?

Martin Gill

Faculty Team Leader

Arts and Social Sciences Faculty Team

University of Leeds

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Outline What is the big deal about?

Analysing the big deals at Leeds

The future

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Benefits Increased and instant access to a wide range

of information 9000 to 35000 titles in a decade

Space savings Reduced ILL costs Ease of administration

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And the reality Mergers Transfers of titles Archival rights No cancellation deals Link to historic print spend Free trials Late announcement of deals Above inflation cost increases, exchange rates,

VAT…..

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Wider environment

Browne report Comprehensive spending review Marketisation of Higher Education Expectations of the digital generation

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The Leeds context

VC is Chair of Russell Group“It has taken more than 800 years to create one of the

world's greatest education systems and it looks like it will take just six months to bring it to its knees” –

Guardian 11th January 2010

University of Leeds economies exercise - £35m savings target from 2010/11

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Leeds University Library 3 years of efficiency savings

1%, 5%, 10%, more in 2011/12?

Resource Allocation Model devolves decisions on materials spending to Schools

Approx 40% of entire materials budget pays for 8 packages

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Decisions for 2011 subscription year Requirement to make savings of approx

£300k from the materials budget – approx 12% cut in real terms

All subjects required to make savings Reviewed all “top sliced” subscriptions No option but to review package deals that

were up for renewal and investigate those that weren’t

Reviewed ILL costs

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Analysing the big deals - cost per use Headline figures show very good cost per

use 10p/use to around £2.50/use overall

Detail less good 99p/use to £99/use 4p/use to £590/use

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Cost per use – cost issues

What price do you use? 2009, 2010, 2011? Do the titles on the invoice match those in your

usage spreadsheet? What rate of exchange do you factor in? When will the terms of a package deal be

announced? Analysis done in March - packages announced

October/November

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Cost per use – use issues

What is use Pdf, html, both? Are the figures reliable, believable? Marketing issues Multiple sources for a title Transfer titles

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Cost per use calculations

How do you match Price and use lists? ISSN? Manual correction

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Cost per use decisions

Decided on a cut-off point for cost per use

Compared the costs of subscribing to journals below that point to the cost of the package

2 packages cancelled, others may follow

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Academic reaction

Cost per use a good starting point

Some issues around it being too crude – also give impact factors in the future?

As a factor in the calculations? As additional evidence?

Some concerns that wider measures of value, e.g. impact, links to research income

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The answer

Is the big deal doomed? Some probably are

Is the answer open access?

Changes to the publishing marketplace? Do we need so many journals? Without a big deal would (should) some have died?

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Journal use

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Risks

Still awaiting academic reaction when the cuts actually happen 2760 titles disappear on 1st January

Will the prices of individual titles mysteriously rise? Will the price of heavily used titles rise?

What would the world look like without big deals?

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The future

Librarians need to develop skills Negotiation – are we customer or intermediary? Data analysis

Publishers need to engage with us More transparency around price rises

Why are their more issues per volume this year? What value will your website improvements

actually bring?

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“The capacity of UK universities to continue to pay such large year-on-year increases for access to scholarly journals is not infinite […] we need to reassess the costs of electronic access and find a new balance between the value added by publishers and the charges they make”

Michael Arthur – VC at Leeds, Chair of Russell Group – RLUK press release Nov 2010