Making the most of a "Big Deal"

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Making the most of a ‘Big Deal’Building a consortial shared list to reclaim title-by-title eJournal selection for libraries

Jason Price, PhDLife Science Librarian

The Claremont Colleges

(California)

Table TalkCharleston Conference 2005

Issues in Book and Serials Acquisition

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3 types of e-access in Elsevier Big Deals

to Subscribed titles (1) –Locked in 2yrs before original contract

to Leased titles–Subject Collections (2)

• 24? compiled by Elsevier

–Unique Title List (3)

• All titles subscribed by ≥ 1 school

– (4)? Shared title lists

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Negatives of Subject Collections1. Forced decisions as to which departments to

support and which to deny2. Each contains a few high use journals and

many low use journals making switching collections difficult

3. Paying 2x for overlap among collections4. Paying 2x for all subscribed titles in the

subject collections5. Titles added/moved on an annual basis*6. Pricing was being manipulated*

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Elsevier offered a SCELC UTL

+ Better titles? ........

+ Wider subject coverage

+ Credit for overlap with subscribed

+ Consistent pricing (% of list)

- Based on legacy subscribed titles

- One size (LARGE) fits none

- Cost greater for smaller schools

- More high priced titles?

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Most SCELCs not interested in UTL

• Elsevier’s Barbara Kaplan:–‘Any list will do’ – same terms–Need more than one list? ‘No Problem’.

• Our problem: What should be on the list? –Every institution’s most highly used titles–Simple, right?

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SCELC Subject Collection Use By Insitution

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10

100

1000

0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700Titles (ordered by use for each institution)

2003

eU

sag

e

Claremont

CalLuth

LomaLinda

Pepperdine

UOP

USD

LMU

WesternU

Mills

MtStMarys

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Building it…

• **Remove each institution’s subscribed titles from their COUNTER stats**

• Add remainder based each schools use:+ Top X% of cummulative use by title+ All titles used more than X times per month

• Deduplicate list• Cut deep, give schools a chance to veto

some titles on cut list

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Should the list be big or small?

• Yes–2 groups of use profiles → 2 lists

• How big and how small?

–3 small schools (1-3 subject collections)–7 larger schools (4-8 subject collections)– Subject collections had been priced equally

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SCELC Subject Collection Use By Insitution

1

10

100

1000

0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700Titles (ordered by use for each institution)

2003

eU

sag

e

Claremont

CalLuth

LomaLinda

Pepperdine

UOP

USD

LMU

WesternU

Mills

MtStMarys

10

Small list Background & Criteria • 3 smallest schools Sub Coll profiles

# of titles # of Sub Colls 163 1

370 2

493 3

• All titles representing top 66% of use

• Every title used at least once per month

• Two added by request

• New core list 55 titles cost ≈ 1.5 SC

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TITLE ISSN2003use

%TotUseinTitle Cum.

Animal Behaviour'00033472 41 25.95%

  .%use

Epilepsy & Behavior'15255050 28 17.72%  

Brain and Language'0093934x 13 8.23% 51.9%

Contemporary Educational Psychology

'0361476x 10 6.33%  

Cell Biology International'10656995 7 4.43%  

Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications

'0006291x 6 3.80% 66.5%

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

'00220965 3 1.90%  

Religion'0048721x 3 1.90%  

Biological Journal of the Linnean Society

'00244066 2 1.27%  

Brain and Cognition'02782626 2 1.27%  

….. ….. ….. …..

158 100.00%

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Large List Background & CriteriaValues are percent of total use represented

School (SC title #) >24uses (Ti) >12 uses (Ti)

Western (579) 74% (78) 87

Claremont (855) 77% (146) 90

LomaLinda (688) 85% (133) 94

UOP (733) 85% (146) 93

LMU noESP (908) 40 64% (45)

Pepperdine noP (790) 44 66% (117)

USD (959) 57 74% (101)

Average >>> (787) 76% (109)

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Trimming the FAT

• Sum of high use titles 766; unique 400

• 400 title list cost ≈ 5.5 Sub Colls

• So Better titles, but not significant savings

• 2nd Cut – High SCELC cost per use– 87 more titles cut (Median list price = $3570)

– (see excel spreadsheet)

• 313 title list ≈ 3 SC Cost (vs 4-8 original)

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Adding some back-Requests ranged from cutting more to adding

back a subject collection’s worth of titles

-We agreed on an intermediate value that each school could add back and worked cooperatively so that our add back lists didn’t overlap

END RESULT – 425 Titles at

cost of 5 SC

BUT…

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STL vs SubColl: Costs decreased

Inst # subscribed

% credit for

subs

% saved vs sub

coll

(CompCore) (425)

CLAR 169 48% 57%

A 258 47% 42%

B 72 18% 38%

C 20 5% 35%

D 18 5% 28%

E 33 20% 12%

F 13 17% -20%

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Opting Out1. A smaller health sciences school

– 2 Subject collections recently added

– Increasing 2004 use

– SC sufficient to cover narrow range of needs

2. A larger more general school--some members of electronic acquisitions team

could not be convinced that less is more (i.e. fewer higher quality titles is better than more with many 0 use); Future use

--had bought many Subject Collection backfiles

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STL vs SC: Did it work?

• Users – No news is good news– Will loss of access bring complaint?– Prepared response–it was that or axe the deal

• Libraries are happy, but– Will average use per title be higher?– Will price per use decline?– Will we manage to truncate the use

distribution or just shift it to the left?– Can we activate PPV and still save money?

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Take home points• Subject collections are a BAD deal• Vendors will allow US to build a Shared list• Collection development is OUR responsibility• Consortia should work as TEAMS to increase

value

• Caviats: – Applies only to publishers who will price leased titles

based on the size of the leased-title collection– Use 2 years data if at all possible!!!

• ?’s -- [email protected]

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STL vs UTL: Are they different?

UTL STL

342 176 250

518 titles $878KAve 1699

426 titles $750KAve 1764

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Why did Elsevier encourage it?

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Why did we encourage it?