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The |
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Big Deal |
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has been a topic of heated discussion among librarians for some twenty or more years now. When first introduced, the attraction of the Big Deal was immediately obvious, since it allows a library to buy its faculty access to most, if not all, of a publisher’s journals at a much lower “cost per article” (discounted) rate. From the start, however, there were doubters. |
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In 2001, the Director of Libraries at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Kenneth Frazier, |
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warned |
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the library community of the dangers of signing big deals, or any comprehensive licensing agreement, with commercial publishers. |
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“The current generation of library directors is engaged in a dangerous ‘game’ in which short-term inst**utional benefits are achieved at the long-term expense of the academic community,” he warned, adding that big deals would weaken libraries’ ability to manage their journal collections, foist on them journals they “neither need nor want” and increase their dependence on publishers “who have already shown their determination to monopolize the information marketplace.” |
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Nevertheless, many libraries did sign big deals. And many later regretted it, not least because, having done so, they felt they had no choice but to keep renewing the contract, even as the cost kept going up and devoured more and more of their budget. |
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Libraries felt trapped, conscious that if they did not renew they would have to go back to subscribing to individual journals at list price, which would mean being able to afford access to fewer journals, and fearful that when they discovered that journals they wanted were no longer available, faculty would revolt. |
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Over time, however, a |
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greater willingness |
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to think the unthinkable emerged, and some libraries began to cancel their big deals. And when they did so the sky did not fall in – which allowed other libraries to take heart. |
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The list maintained |
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here (2) |
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suggests that libraries began cancelling their big deals as long ago as 2008, but the number doing so has been accelerating in the last few years. What has really focussed minds are the recent decisions by both the |
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University of California |
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and |
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MIT |
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to walk away from their negotiations with Elsevier rather than renew their big deals. |
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But it is not necessary to walk away completely in the way UC and MIT have done. Instead, libraries can “unbundle” their Big Deal by replacing the large package of several thousand journals they are subscribed to with a small à la carte bundle of a few hundred journals, and in the process save themselves a great deal of money. |
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What is helping libraries to make the decision to unbundle is the knowledge that more and more research is becoming available on an open access basis. In addition, new tools like |
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Unsub |
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are available to advise them on which journals they can cancel without too great an impact, and which journals are essential and so should be retained. |
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Given the big savings that can be realised, and the pressure library budgets are under, unbundling is expected to grow, particularly in light of the straitened circ***stances that libraries will find themselves in after |
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the pandemic. |
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This year a number of US universities have unbundled in favour of smaller packages of journals, including |
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UNC Chapel Hill, Iowa State University and the State University of New York (SUNY) -- a system of 64 inst**utions. Coming in the wake of UC |
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’s |
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decision to walk away from Elsevier these |
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“ |
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little deals |
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” |
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have attracted a lot of attention. |
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In Europe, by contrast, there is a |
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greater focus right no on signing transformative agreements. In addition to providing reading rights, these new-style big deals include prepaid publis***ng rights to allow faculty to publish their articles on an open access basis. Amongst other things, these deals help a***uage concerns about double dipping (where a university may end up paying both article-processing charges and subscriptions for the same journals). |
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So how is a decision to unbundle made, and what are the issues and implications of making the decision? To get a clearer picture I spoke recently by email with Shannon Pritting, Shared Library Services Platform Project Director at SUNY. In April, SUNY replaced its Big Deal of 2,200 journals with Elsevier with a “little deal” of just 248 journals. By doing so, it says, it has saved about $7 million. |
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Unbundling raises a lot of questions, and I suspect we may not have answers to all of the questions for some time. |
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For instance, as more and more universities unbundle, how accurate will the calculations informing the decisions about which journals to give up and which to keep prove to be over time? This could have implications for, amongst other things, how much of the money that has been saved will need to be spent on obtaining paywalled articles through Interlibrary Loan (ILL) and doc***ent delivery services. |
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Moreover, since unbundling |
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appears currently to be mainly a US thing (with Europe favouring transformative agreements) might we see a geographical divide emerge? If we do, what might the implications of this be, especially for the open access movement? |
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In addition, might unbundling encourage more researchers to use illegal services like Sci-Hub, and might unbundling see university libraries marginalised to some extent, especially if they do not play an active role in funding open access? |
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Please read on for the interview. |
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The Public Library of Science (PLOS) and the University of California ( UC ) have today announced a two-year agreement designed to make it easier and more affordable for UC researchers to publish in the non-profit open-access publisher’s suite of seven journals. |
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Under the agreement – which is planned to go into effect this Spring – UC Libraries will automatically pay the first $1,000 of the article processing charge (APC) incurred when UC authors choose to publish in a PLOS journal. |
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Authors who do not have research funds available can request UC Libraries pay the full APC fee. The aim is to ensure that lack of research funds does not present a barrier for UC authors wis***ng to publish with PLOS. |
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The pilot is intended to test whether an inst**utional partic****tion model that leverages multiple funding sources, rather than only grant funds, can provide a sustainable and inclusive path to full open access. |
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Below PLOS CEO Alison Mudditt discusses the new agreement and addresses some of the issues that the |
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current trend for universities and consortia to sign so-called transformative agreements with legacy publishers raises for native |
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open-access publishers like PLOS . |
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RP: The PLOS/UC agreement is essentially the same deal as UC signed with |
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JMIR Publications |
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in January. Is that correct? |
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RP: Would I be right in thinking that these deals are native open-access publishers’ response to the transformative agreements that legacy publishers have been signing with universities and consortia like Project DEAL? |
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RP: How many articles do you envisage UC faculty publis***ng with PLOS during the two-year period of the agreement? |
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RP: How many articles a year do UC faculty currently publish with PLOS? |
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|
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RP: As I understand it, the agreement means that UC faculty will be able to publish in any PLOS journal and the first $1,000 will be paid by UC libraries. If the researcher has access to no research funds s/he can request full funding from the libraries. Is there any maximum sum agreed with UC libraries such that the funds could run out before the pilot ends? |
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plus |
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RP: Will the details of the agreement be published? |
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RP: PLOS has an Inst**utional Account Program |
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of which I do not think UC is currently a partic****nt. What is the difference between the agreement announced today and UC simply signing up to become a partic****nt of the IAP? |
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deal |
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’ |
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very |
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The Scholarly Kitchen (2) |
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India has announced that it will not, after all, be joining cOAlition S. Instead it will focus on developing an open-access solution better suited to its needs. What has changed? |
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The Wire |
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“Removing access barriers to [the scholarly] literature will accelerate research, enrich education, share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich, make this literature as useful as it can be, and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge.” |
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The Bookseller |
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Gold is a dead model for Open Access Books. |
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RP: Can you say what your position is at King’s and your research interests? |
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RP: How would you describe your views on open access? |
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RP: You and your colleague Henry Stead have a book in print with Routledge called A People’s History of Cla***ics. This is the product of an |
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AHRC-funded research project |
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that finished in 2016. Due to the topic of the book, you were very keen to publish it open access. Can you say why you feel it is important that this book should be freely available to everyone? |
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A People’s History of Cla***ics: Cla*** and Greco-Roman Antiquity in Britain 1689-1939 |
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RP: Can you say how important the book is to your department for the purposes of REF 2021? Is it double-weighted for instance (that is, it should count as two outputs rather than one?) |
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RP: When does it need to be available in order to be eligible for the REF? |
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RP: Currently, the REF does not require monographs to be made open access, but (as the REF Guidance on submissions doc***ent |
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puts it |
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) “The funding bodies encourage inst**utions to take a proportionate view of the costs and benefits of making other types of outputs (including monographs) available as open access.” |
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RP: As I understand it, you asked Research Support at King’s College (part of King’s Library) if they could help you make the book OA. After checking the various policies, they said they could fund the whole cost of publication from the RCUK block grant because your research had been funded by AHRC. They even cited from the RCUK OA Policy to support that decision. |
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RP: When the book was ready you went back to them to ask where the publisher should send the invoice. At that point, you were told that the commitment to pay had been withdrawn (although no one had contacted you to tell you as much when the decision was made). Can you explain what happened, your understanding of why the commitment to pay was withdrawn, why you think you were not told that it had been withdrawn, and what the implications of this subsequent decision were for you? |
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RP: You have a large number of Twitter and Facebook followers, and you regularly publish a blog. I believe you have made great play of your book being open access. Is that a problem for you and your co-author? |
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my |
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RP: Evidence suggests that even where open access is mandatory (as it is with journal articles) it may not always be possible to obtain funding for publis***ng charges. In January last year, for instance, Oxford University researchers |
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were told |
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that the university’s block grant had run out and that researchers “are therefore asked to delay submission of new articles to journals”. How practical do you think open access is if it requires paying to publish in a sector that frequently faces funding problems? |
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RP: As noted, it is not currently mandatory to make monographs OA, but UK funders strongly encourage it and UKRI is reviewing its policy. Indeed, in February last year Steven Hill, Director of Research at Research England |
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told (2) |
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that for REF2027 the current policies on open access as applied to journal articles would be extended to encompa*** monographs and other “long form outputs”. Do you think your experience is relevant to this review? If so, what advice would you give to Research England on this? |
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The image (which will be reproduced on the book’s cover) is the banner of the Fenhall Drift Lodge, Lanchester, now in custodians***p of Lanchester Parish Church and reproduced courtesy of the Lanchester Parish Council and Durham Miners’ a***ociation. It was made by Tutill of Chesham to designs by Ernie Reay and George Thomas. See further in the blog post |
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, by Edith Hall |
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** Image courtesy of t**ina Chalmatzi, originally published in a n interview with Edith Hall by Tasoula Eptakili for the Greek newspaper Kathimerini |
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RP: Can you tell me how much money King’s has received in block grant funding since RCUK began to provide it in 2013? |
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RP: On July 15th I asked King’s Libraries |
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a question |
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on Twitter about its block grant spending and whether it had made the data freely available on the web (as most other universities in receipt of block funding appear to have done). If it has done so, I asked, could I be given a link to that data? I was promised an answer in the next day or so. It is now several weeks since then and I have not had my questions answered. I a***ume King’s is sending annual reports on how it is spending the block grant to UKRI. Can you let me have copies of those reports please? |
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RP: When you were head of Research Support at King’s you agreed to a subvention to allow Edith Hall to make her book |
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open access. When the money was awarded Hall was cited two paragraphs from the |
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RCUK Policy on Open Access |
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to justify the decision. When she completed the book and asked for the publisher to be paid, however, she was told that RCUK does not allow block grant funds to be used for BPCs. I must a***ume that both these interpretations of the RCUK policy cannot be correct, or might it be that it is possible to pick and choose different parts of the RCUK policy to suit one’s purpose? If not the latter, is it you that misunderstood the RCUK policy when you agreed to the subvention or was the subsequent decision not to honour the commitment a misunderstanding of the policy? |
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RP: Why did Research Support not get back to Edith Hall at the time the initial decision was overturned to explain that it had been overturned and that King’s was no longer willing to honour its commitment, rather than wait until the money was requested, when timing (re the REF) was of the essence, and when it was too late to request AHRC to fund the BPC, leaving Hall and her co-author no option but to revert to a traditional all rights reserved contract – despite Hall having repeatedly promised her thousands of Twitter and blog followers that the book would be OA, confident in the knowledge that King’s had agreed to pay the BPC? |
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RP: You were at that time the manager of Research Support. I note today that your t**le is different to when the commitment to Hall was made. Can you say who replaced you as manager of Research Support at King’s and when? |
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RP: Subsequent to the initial decision to grant the subvention to Edith Hall, Simon Tanner published a blog post in which he concluded that Book Processing Charges in a Gold OA environment “would be utterly unsustainable in a future OA mandated REF environment.” Would I be right to conclude that there has been a change of policy at King’s over OA monographs and that it is this that led Research Support to overturn its decision to pay the BPC for Edith Hall’s book? |
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RP: Or does the withdrawal of Research Support’s commitment rather signal a difference of opinion or a policy mismatch between King’s Libraries and senior management over the issue of OA monographs? |
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RP: Either way, do you not feel that having agreed to the subvention King’s should have honoured its commitment? If not, why not? |
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RP: As you will know, last year the Director of Research at Research England |
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Steven Hill |
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The Bookseller that for REF2027 the current policies on open access as applied to journal articles will be extended to encompa*** monographs and other “long form outputs”. And right now, UKRI is conducting a review in order to establish how this policy decision will be implemented. In light of this it seems inevitable to me that we are about to move to a world in which monographs are published OA and I can see no reasonable alternative to their being funded by means of BPCs. Would you agree? If not, why not? |
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RP: Would I be right to conclude that senior management at King’s are opposed to the direction of travel being taken by UKRI over OA monographs? Is it maybe even resistant to the very notion of OA monographs? |
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RP: In his blog post Simon Tanner says that King’s was the third-most prolific producer of books in terms of submissions to REF2014. How many books is King’s currently producing each year and how many of these (if any) are being made available on an OA basis? |
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[RP: |
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It might be useful to provide a little more background and context to this discussion. Where a scientist will write a paper and then send it to a journal publisher for consideration, with humanities monographs the author generally does things the other way round: s/he will propose an idea to a publisher before writing the book. The publisher will likely then send that proposal (the book’s topic and how the topic will be dealt with) out for review. Only once the reviews have been provided, and any recommended changes made to the book proposal (a***uming the publisher is still willing to proceed), will the author(s) sit down and write the text (of, say, 200,000 words). Sometimes the completed text will also be sent out for further review before the book is finally cleared for publication. |
| 115 |
This process takes a lot longer than sending a, say, 5,000-word scientific paper to a journal and waiting for it to be reviewed and published (which can sometimes happen within 3 months), especially when the book author(s) is/ are highly research active and working on several other books and projects simultaneously. |
| 116 |
In the case of the book we are discussing the text was not finally and fully accepted for publication until June this year, which is when Hall contacted Research Support to ask for the promised BPC to be released (on 22nd June). In its initial response, which was not sent until 12th July, Research Support replied that three years is a long time in open access and that the demand on RCUK funds was now significantly higher. (It later added that it was not in any case permitted to use RCUK funds to pay BPCs). Consequently, it suggested that the Faculty of Arts and Humanities be asked for money to pay the BPC. More than a month after Hall made contact (26th July), the Vice Dean Research said that he could not provide the funds either. |
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At this point, Hall had no option but to go back to the publisher and ask to revert to a traditional contract. She then negotiated with the publisher an option that would allow the book to be made OA after three years for a greatly reduced BPC. When she asked Research Support if they would pay this reduced fee they agreed. As such, it is not so much that Research Support eventually secured funds to cover the cost of the BPC, but that it secured a considerably lower sum in order for the book to be released after a three-year embargo. The book will not be freely available until 2023. |
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With regard to Research Support having offered a “soft” commitment: when Hall was informed that the money would be made available to her she was told, “As you are funded by AHRC we are prepared to fund the whole cost of publication for your monograph from the RCUK block grant.” There was no indication here that the commitment would expire at some point in the future, or that it was “soft” (whatever that might mean). It would have been reasonable for Hall to a***ume that at that point the commitment was recorded in some file or doc***ent somewhere indicating that the BPC had been promised to her. It would now seem, however, that this is not the case and that King’s operates a first come first served system. More precisely, it sounds like a “first to send an invoice” system rather than a “first to be granted a subvention” system. |
| 119 |
Other universities have been making data about how they are spending their block grants freely available on the web (open access) at the same time as they file the reports to RCUK. Sometimes this is as a spreadsheet, sometimes as a complete report – e.g. see the information published by |
| 120 |
St Andrews |
| 121 |
, (6) |
| 122 |
Queen’s, Belfast |
| 123 |
LSHTM |
| 124 |
Edinburgh |
| 125 |
Strathclyde |
| 126 |
Imperial College |
| 127 |
LSE |
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, and |
| 129 |
Cambridge |
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. This information could in any case be obtained by means of a Freedom of Information request – so it seems strange that King’s is withholding it. |
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King’s open access policy is available online |
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, and includes the statement: “This policy’s requirements apply to research outputs that const**ute journal articles and conference contributions. Its adoption is encouraged for other types of outputs, including books and book chapters, digital artefacts, and other types of publications”]. |
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