Open Access News

As Frazier noted, a key feature of journal bundling is strict limits on a library’s ability to cancel titles. This restriction of cancellations creates challenges for budget management, for collection management, and for the marketplace of scholarly journals. As library budgets are locked into large bundles, cancellation pressure on unbundled titles increases and funds to acquire new journals outside of bundles are squeezed out. In addition, the size of the largest bundles has been growing. There is a history of significant consolidation among the largest publishers in recent years, reducing libraries’ choices among journal bundles. In the three years since ARL last surveyed its members regarding e-journal subscriptions, several of the largest players have merged: Academic with Elsevier, and Kluwer Academic with Springer. The consequence of these mergers is that a short list of publisher bundles account for substantial and growing proportions of library budgets. A short list of negotiations increasingly determine sales terms and access to hundreds of titles and consume the majority of a research library’s journals budget....Experience with past surveys has shown how difficult it is to obtain comparable price information on journal bundles. Because of nondisclosure clauses, the diversity in the structure of pricing models between publishers and among customers, varying practices for allocating of costs within and between institutions, and occasional funding from sources outside the library budget, it is nearly impossible to construct a rubric for reporting pricing that is not unbearably burdensome for libraries to use....There is evidence in the survey responses that, by and large, publishers are encouraging this movement from print to electronic journals. However, savings incentives are generally reported to be modest or even nonexistent....The picture is more mixed with regard to assessments of publishers’ archiving arrangements to protect content in the case of business failure or other loss of content on the publishers’ side. A strong majority of libraries (71% of contracts) reported that they had investigated a publisher’s archiving plans. However, for those who checked, the publisher’s arrangements were found satisfactory by only 60% of the respondents. While a 40% dissatisfaction rate represents a minority assessment, it is a substantial customer base to be expressing “no confidence”. It may be that until publishers increase customer confidence in their archiving arrangements, substantial numbers of libraries will continue to retain print subscriptions out of concerns about long-term access to electronic journals....Libraries reported an average satisfaction rating of 3.4 (on a 5-point scale) for the pricing of their first contract with any given publisher. They reported somewhat lower satisfaction with consecutive contracts—down to 3.25 for current contracts—suggesting a perception that, as contracts are renegotiated, perceptions of advantageous pricing are weakening....There is no doubt that large commercial publishers’ bundles are a substantial part of research library collections. It is also clear that significant changes in library collections are underway. Cancellation projects are common....Cancellation of bundled titles has been effectively limited in recent years. Publisher’s archiving arrangements are unsatisfactory to at least a substantial minority of the community. Satisfaction with bundle pricing is decreasing through successive negotiations. This survey documented that journal bundles have already enjoyed substantial protection from cancellation. With the majority of respondents reporting recent cancellation projects, the inescapable conclusion is that other segments of research library collections have been reduced to a greater extent in compensation for the protection afforded to bundles. This should be of concern to the library community and to publishers without the market power to gain similar protection for their titles....If libraries could eliminate nondisclosure clauses, obtain more generous cancellation terms, and achieve better price structures, satisfaction with bundles would likely increase.