Category: Serials Crisis

"Max Planck Society Discontinues Agreement with Elsevier; Stands Firm with Projekt DEAL Negotiations"

The Max Planck Digital Library has released Max Planck Society Discontinues Agreement with Elsevier; Stands Firm with Projekt DEAL Negotiations.

Here's an excerpt:

The President and scientific council members of the Max Planck Society (MPS), one of the world's largest research performing organizations, counting 14,000 scientists who publish 12K new research articles a year—around 1500 of which in Elsevier journals, have mandated the Max Planck Digital Library to discontinue their Elsevier subscription when the current agreement expires on December 31, 2018. With this move the Society joins nearly 200 universities and research institutions in Germany who have already cancelled their individual agreements with Elsevier in the course of 2016 and 2017 and affirmed their support of the national licensing framework Projekt DEAL, led by the German Rector’s Conference.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Death By 1,000 Cuts: Periodicals Price Survey 2018"

Stephen Bosch et al. have published "Death By 1,000 Cuts: Periodicals Price Survey 2018 in Library Journal."

Here's an excerpt:

The journals marketplace is a mature market in which demand and supply are in equilibrium. While the original e-journal big deal pricing model of maintaining the current spend with a publisher plus a pro rata amount to access additional content did expand offerings to libraries, it did not address the underlying funding problems and in many cases made them worse. The growth of Gold Open Access… addressed access to content but compounded budget issues by adding additional costs.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

Red Light, Green Light: Aligning the Library to Support Licensing

Ithaka S+R has released Red Light, Green Light: Aligning the Library to Support Licensing.

Here's an excerpt:

There is widespread frustration within the academic library community with the seemingly uncontrollable price increases of e-resources, especially of licensed bundles of scholarly journals. The scholarly communications movement has vastly expanded academic and indeed public access to scholarly content. Yet prices for certain scholarly resources continue to outpace budget increases, and librarians do not feel in control of budgets and pricing. What if libraries found ways to bring together the whole library behind the objective of stabilizing or reducing what they pay?

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"Journal Publishers’ Big Deals: Are They Worth It?"

Stéphani Gagnon has self-archived "Journal Publishers' Big Deals: Are They Worth It?."

Here's an excerpt:

Following the initial Wiley's unbundling based on quantitative indicators, Université de Montréal refined its analysis methodology to incorporate qualitative indicators; i.e., the voice of its community. That methodology allowed identification of 5,893 periodicals deemed essential out of a possible 50,000 subscriptions. We realized that, at best, barely more than a third of the periodicals included in most Big Deals are truly of use.

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"New World, Same Model: Periodicals Price Survey 2017"

Stephen Bosch and Kittie Henderson have published "New World, Same Model: Periodicals Price Survey 2017" in Library Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

Since e-journal package prices are often based on custom publisher quotes, we analyzed the 2017 price increases of more than 6,300 e-journal packages handled by EBSCO and found that the average inflationary increase for 2017 was in the 4.5%–4.9% range. Reflecting the percentage of library orders dedicated to electronic format, approximately 78% of the 2017 orders placed by EBSCO on behalf of academic libraries were for either e-only or print plus online combinations.

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"Transparency and Openness to Scientific Publishing: The Finnish Research Organisations Pay Millions of Euros Annually to the Large Publishers"

The Open Science and Research Initiative has released "Transparency and Openness to Scientific Publishing: The Finnish Research Organisations Pay Millions of Euros Annually to the Large Publishers."

Here's an excerpt:

Open Science and Research Initiative announces the scientific publisher costs paid by Finnish universities and research organizations from 2010 to 2015. According to the data, the publisher costs have risen around ten percent per year. . . .

Publisher cost data is now available as open data licensed under CC BY 4.0 license. You are free to share and adapt the data for any purpose, with author attribution and indication if changes were made. Publisher cost details and a link to the web application can be found at openscience.fi/publisher_costs.

See also: "Scientific Journal Subscription Costs in Finland 2010-2015: A Preliminary Analysis."

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"Fracking the Ecosystem: Periodicals Price Survey 2016"

Stephen Bosch and Kittie Henderson have published "Fracking the Ecosystem: Periodicals Price Survey 2016" in Library Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

Accordingly, we have measured the 2015 price increases of more than 5,000 e-journal packages handled by EBSCO. Our analysis indicates an average e-journal package price increase of 5.8% to 6.3%, down slightly from last year's average of 6.6%.

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