Nemesis of the Big Deals?

Citation

McGrath, M. (2011), "Nemesis of the Big Deals?", Interlending & Document Supply, Vol. 39 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ilds.2011.12239baa.001

Nemesis of the Big Deals?

Article Type: Editorial From: Interlending & Document Supply, Volume 39, Issue 2

Will 2011 be the year that sees the first serious resistance to the Big Deals? They are the biggest single factor in the decline of document supply world wide, with the exception of the USA – we published an article in the last issue by Collette Mak on US “exceptionalism”. There are a few pointers to indicate that things this year will be different – when the bubble may finally burst. A report from the US-based Allen Press demonstrates the extent of resistance to Big Deals with ten academic libraries reporting cancellations – http://allenpress.com/system/files/pdfs/library/ap_journal_pricing_study_2010.pdf

An interview by Richard Poynder with Derk Haank, CEO of Springer has received wide coverage and it deserves some further comment. Because Haank’s highlights – both consciously and unconsciously – many of the drivers of change in scholarly publishing generally and libraries in particular. It is available freely at: www.infotoday.com/IT/jan11/Interview-with-Derk-Haank.shtml

My own comments in italics follow each quote:

The Big Deal is the best invention since sliced bread. I agree that there was once a serial pricing problem; I have never denied there was a problem. But it was the Big Deal that solved it.

Well his taste in bread matches his understanding of library budgets. Big Deals gave access to more journals but prices continue to rise. He is presumably referring to price-per-use which has indeed dropped but total usage has risen so high that the total cost to the library continues to rise. The maths is not hard.

It did two things. First, it corrected everything that went wrong in the serials crisis in one go: people were able to get back all the journals that they had had to cancel, and they gained access to even more journals in the process.

Only partially true – libraries gained access to a lot of journals but many are never or very little used and many have had to cancel journals that are used in order to pay for the Big Deals.

Second, electronic publishing reduces the overall costs of publishing, since distribution costs become virtually nil. We could never have offered the Big Deal in the paper world. So in inventing it, we publishers made absolutely perfect use of new technology in a way that benefited both ourselves and our customers.

But not at reduced prices. He makes an interesting point on costs which can be extended– distribution costs are “virtually nil”, authors and reviewers are also nil cost and most editors are paid little if at all. So all the production costs are confined to converting the delivered electronic files from the editor to a form accessible to the user. Most of the rest is marketing, overheads and profits. And “absolutely perfect”? – a tautology if ever there was one!

Q: Why then do librarians still mutter darkly about the Big Deal?

A: It is all part of the process of negotiating with publishers. The truth is that it is in the interests of everyone – publishers and librarians – to keep the Big Deal going.

A pretty cynical observation. Why is it in the interest of libraries to take many journals they do not want?

The reality is that our journals are growing in volume by 6% to 7% per year. We have been doing all that is possible over the last couple of year, and will continue to do so to ensure that our price increases are lower than the volume increases. But not increasing our prices is not an option in the long term.

See comments on costs above. Most of the extra work falls on authors, reviewers and editors – who are “free” to the publisher.

We can’t give libraries access to any more journals because they already have access to all they could ever want.

Extraordinary – it is a generally acknowledged today that no library can hold all it requires for its users – that goes for Springer material as much as for other publishers.

For me, OA is just a business model, and I have never understood all the emotion aroused by it.

Perhaps he should open his eyes a little beyond the bottom line.

We should thank Richard Poynder and indeed Derk Haank for their exposure of the underlying forces that drive commercial publishing and that have brought libraries to the state that they are now in. 2011 will indeed be interesting!

Mike McGrath