Guest Post — Texas Library Coalition for United Action (TLCUA) and Elsevier Conclude Negotiations for Access to ScienceDirect Journals
Ginger Williams and Posie Aagaard offer a look at the Texas Library Coalition and its new deal with Elsevier.
Return of the Big Deal: Developments in Texas and India
New arrangements planned in Texas and India move us away from a universal transition to OA, and back towards the Big Deal.
Six Questions (with Answers!) about UC’s and Elsevier’s New Transformative Deal
Six questions and answers about the new transformative deal between Elsevier and the University of California.
“Little Deals” Everywhere: Is Demand-driven Collection Development Catching Fire?
As the big deal falls, we are witnessing a shift in academic library purchasing power closer to the point of need.
What Do Libraries Keep When They Cancel the Big Deal?
How do libraries decide which titles to keep when they cancel the Big Deal? What do the results look like? A look at seven libraries that walked away by @lisalibrarian.
Will Transformative Agreements Unravel Library Consortia?
Will cost share allocations for transformative agreements threaten the cohesion of library consortia?
Will the European Big Deal Contagion Spread to North America?
The European academic sector has taken a stronger consortial negotiating posture, resulting in Big Deal cancellations. Today, equity investors and analysts want to know: Will this contagion spread from Europe to North America, resulting in global pandemic?
Stage Two Disruption in Scholarly Communications
Popular opinion to the contrary, scholarly publishing has not been disrupted. But only superior management can navigate the many challenges ahead.
Sci-Hub Moves to the Center of the Ecosystem
As Sci-Hub has grown, it has come to play a larger and larger role in scholarly communications overall. At this time its presence can be felt in the background of every major strategic situation publishers face.
How Societies Structure Deals with Their Partners
Professional societies often seek partnerships for different reasons. This post summarized the categories of partnerships and helps to identify when a partnership is not really a partnership.
When the Wolf Finally Arrives: Big Deal Cancellations in North American Libraries
For years, we in libraries have been predicting the imminent demise of the manifestly-unsustainable Big Deal — and yet it has persisted. Now that may be changing.
A Quick Tour Around the World of Scholarly Journal Publishing
A presentation to the 2016 ISMTE US Conference. Something of a “state of our industry” overview, or perhaps, everything I needed to know I learned from the other bloggers at The Scholarly Kitchen.
Revisiting: Peak Subscription
Revisiting Michael Clarke’s 2014 post on the two drivers of growth in STM and scholarly publishing: site licensing and global expansion. As successful as these activities have been, however, we appear to be nearing, if not a peak, at least a plateau. Institutional library budgets have not kept pace with the growth in global research output. At the same time, institutional market penetration is nearing saturation for many publishers.
So the question is, where is the growth going to come from?
Neither Fish Nor Fowl: Journal Publishing and the University Press
University presses are not well positioned to thrive in journal publishing because they have not adopted any of the (relatively few and common) business strategies that are necessary, given market dynamics, for success. I do not put forth this thesis lightly. I have great affection and admiration for university presses, their value — craftsmanship, attention to detail, “getting it right”— and their mission. This is not admiration from afar: I served, in the formative years of my career, at the University of Chicago Press (Chicago), where I learned the tools of the trade and many of the practices and protocols of scholarly publishing still in use today. But after nearly two decades of observing university presses, from within and without, this thesis seems to be inescapable.
Revisiting: Have Journal Prices Really Increased Much in the Digital Age?
Revisiting Kent Anderson’s 2013 post discussing a study on library spending that suggests that the costs of journals have not increased as much as is commonly claimed, and that the increases seen are due to the increased volume being published.