Wouldn’t it be great to know about the possible impacts of cancelling a Big Deal before going through the big hassle of actually cancelling one? Since my institution never entered into a Big Deal journal package with a certain major academic publisher, I could examine various data regarding this publisher to help imagine what might happen if we were to cancel an actual Big Deal with a comparable publisher. Examples of data used are interlibrary loan statistics, price history, and new purchase requests. I will share my findings and will present ideas so you can conduct a similar analysis at your institution.

1. What We Can Learn from
the Big Deal that Never Was
Carol Joyner Cramer
Charleston Conference
November 8, 2019

2. Context
6 Big Deals
(“The Other 6”)
…what about the 7th
publisher?
(“Publisher X”)

3. If we canceled a Big Deal, we might assess…
• New subscription
requests
• ILL data
• Price increases

4. Desiderata List: Unmet Requests
• 102 total items on list (databases, journals, etc.)
• 40 journals
• 45% of all requested journals from “Publisher X”
(18% of all requests)
• 1 request is a title outside a Big Deal from
“The Other 6”

5. Most-ILL’ed List
• Publisher X
• 2018: 75% (21 of 28)
• 2017: 58% (21 of 36)
• 2016: 56% (9 of 16)
• All 3 years: 64% (51 of 80)
• 4 total titles from “The Other 6”
• 7 Publisher X titles repeated.

6. Inflation
https://www.library.virginia.edu/collections/disclosures

7. Price Increases for WFU
Publisher X was
2nd highest of 7
with 7.07% annualized
price increase (2015-9)
Includes the effects of title transfers
and new/canceled subscriptions
6.68% for titles paid every
year 2015-9

8. What We Learned
• Many (most?) needed unsubscribed journal titles are
published by Publisher X
• This non-Big-Deal showed higher annual price
inflation than most actual Big Deals
(albeit with freedom to cancel individual titles)

9. Acknowledgements
Jodi Upton, EBSCO Information Services
UVA Collections Disclosures:
https://www.library.virginia.edu/collections/disclosures
Creative Commons Licensed Photos:
• “Kind of a Big Deal”: Jen https://www.flickr.com/photos/jenrab/2058895447
• “Interlibrary Loan”: Tom Brandt
https://www.flickr.com/photos/12567713@N00/3304744853
• “20110622 No Big Deal”: Chris Piascik
https://www.flickr.com/photos/chrispiascik/5858808109
• “Inflation”: Forsaken Fotos
https://www.flickr.com/photos/55229469@N07/9594830929