The University library of Bern carried out a one-year survey of the frequency of use, cost and cost-per-article-use (CPU) of its e-journals. The collected data allows a comparison of journal bundles and individual subscriptions. The results show that the CPUs for Big Deals are in an acceptable range; however because of their high cost they limit the library’s flexibility to provide user-oriented resources

Bissels, Gerhard

Kirgus, Isabelle

Schaffer, Michelle F.

English

The University library of Bern carried out a one-year survey of the frequency of use, cost and cost-per-article-useÂ (CPU) of its e-journals. The collected data allows a comparison of journal bundles and individual subscriptions.Â The results show that the CPUs for Big Deals are in an acceptable range; however because of their high cost theyÂ limit the library’s flexibility to provide user-oriented resources

Journal of EAHIL

7 Journal of EAHIL 2016; Vol. 12 (1): 6-9 Feature ArticleIntroductionBundled sale of electronic journalsAs libraries have moved away from print towardelectronic formats several commercial and non-profitpublishers offered new licensing models that allowaccess to multiple journal titles for a fixed price. Theterm “Big Deals” is used for bundled access tojournals sold as a unit for one price (1). These 2-3 yearcontracts have a built-in annual price increase ofabout 6% (2). The cost is composed of expendituresfor journals to which the library previously subscribed(“core titles”), an access fee, and low charges foronline access to previously unsubscribed journals(“collection titles”) (3, 4). Kenneth Frazier predictedthat even the conditions of Big Deals are attractivefor individual university libraries; on the other handlibraries would not be able to sustain the annualincreases of such arrangements (3). In general “BigDeal” journal subscription packages are cost-effective, but they consume a large portion of alibrary’s budget and limit its flexibility to purchaseother resources (5). In addition, “collection titles” areexcluded from archive arrangements in the event ofa cancellation of the deal.Motivation and study goalsFor the last approximately 15 years the Universitylibrary of Bern has been tied to journal packages thatlimit the flexibility in the selection of titles. Thecontracts often force the library to retain subscriptioneven if the composition of the packages does not meetthe actual needs. The decision to enter into a bundledarrangement is usually taken after a thoroughcost/benefit analysis to see whether the arrangementjustifies the expenses. The decision to renew an existinglicense should be taken with equal care. The 3-monthproject aimed to verify the relevance of the e-journalsin relation to the costs for the Science, Technology andMedical (STM) areas. The evaluation increased thetransparency and enabled us to regain control over thecomposition of our e-journals collection. It allowed usto make economies in order to safeguard future accessto e-journals in line with the research and educationneeds of the University. Further, the annual increase ofsuch arrangements exceeds the normal growth of themedia budget and forces the library to find ways tostabilize its expenditure. The STM disciplines are mostaffected by the increasing costs which limit their abilityto purchase additional resources. Funds freed upthrough the evaluation of current subscriptions couldthen be used to purchase e.g. missing requiredtextbooks for students. For the first time subjectlibrarians in the STM area got an overview of thecontent of the bundled arrangements. The survey formsthe basis for further decisions and supports theexchange of the topics with the faculties. A second goalwe pursued was renegotiations of subscription costsand conditions with the publishers.AbstractThe University library of Bern carried out a one-year survey of the frequency of use, cost and cost-per-article-use(CPU) of its e-journals. The collected data allows a comparison of journal bundles and individual subscriptions.The results show that the CPUs for Big Deals are in an acceptable range; however because of their high cost theylimit the library’s flexibility to provide user-oriented resources. Key words: evaluation of e-journals; Big Deals; e-journal usage; science and medical research.Increasing transparency for e-journal subscriptionsand Big Deals. A comprehensive assessment of e-journals in Science, Technology and Medicine (STM)Michelle F. Schaffer, Isabelle Kirgus and Gerhard BisselsBern University Library, Bern, SwitzerlandAddress for correspondence: Michelle F. Schaffer, Bern University Library, Münstergasse 61, 3008 Bern, Switzerland. Tel.+41 (0)31 631 92 96. E-mail: michelle.schaffer@ub.unibe.ch 8Journal of EAHIL 2016; Vol. 12 (1): 6-9 Increasing transparency for e-journal subscriptions and Big DealsData gathering and proceedingFirst a detailed recording of data for 2014 was carriedout to analyse in a second step the data on the level ofCPU. The metric CPU is common in US libraries forthe evaluation of Big Deals, however in Europe thismethod is rarely used. The evaluation was conductedon the level of the mode of licensing (deal-level metrics)and the level of the single journals (journal-levelmetrics) (6).Collected data are cost, uses, data preservation, CPU,mode of licensing, publisher, long-term preservation,assignment to individual disciplines, ISSN, URL andjournal name. A professional tool or method for the efficientquantitative and qualitative data gathering and analysisis still missing. The Electronic Resources Management(ERM) contains metadata and some additionalinformation. However, several other sources wereconsulted to collect data on different excel sheets thatwere finally matched with each other. COUNTERreports are the standard for measurement of use (7).The Successful Full-Text Article Request (SFTAR) wastaken from the COUNTER Journal report (J1). Datafor uses are often missing, because the small providerdoes not offer surveys of the uses values. In order to make the evaluation comparable, therelative uses were calculated, taking into account thenumber of journals per discipline or licensing model.Cost were either taken from ERM or individualinstitute libraries were asked for their payments forsubscribed journals. ResultsDpnqbsjtpo!pg!ejggfsfou!mjdfodf!npefmt!jo!uif!TUN!bsfbWe divided the different licensing models in smallpackages (mostly non-profit publishers), the 3 BigDeals (Elsevier, Springer and Wiley-Blackwell) andindividual subscribed journals. With 89.5% thebundled arrangements have the highest portion injournal titles; therefore the 3 Big Deals by faroutweigh single-title subscriptions. However, the BigDeals recorded only 29% of all uses. The journals ofthe small bundled sales of the non-profit publishersare frequently used and reflect the high quality ofthe journals that are often assigned to one specificdiscipline (Gjhvsf!2). Ejtusjcvujpo!pg!uif!f.kpvsobmt!up!joejwjevbm!tvckfdutThe journals of the STM area were classified into 15disciplines which we defined ourselves. The analysisconsiders the individual e-journal subscriptions and the“core titles” of the 3 Big Deals. We observed that thenumber of journal titles subscribed to roughlycorresponds to the number of academics and studentsin a discipline, with the highest number of journals inthe medical area (28.7%) and less journals in the areaof plant science and veterinary medicine (1.5%, each)(Gjhvsf!3). About 50% relative use are generated by thegeneral Science journals due to a few highly populartitles such as Nature, Science and PNAS. TheVeterinary Science shows the highest relative use (15%)Figure 1. Comparison of number of titles and relativeuses for Big Deals, for bundles of non-profit publisherand single subscriptions.Figure 2. Distribution of the number of titles on in-dividual subjects.9 Journal of EAHIL 2016; Vol. 12 (1): 6-9 Michelle F. Schaffer, Isabelle Kirgus and Gerhard Bisselswithin the individual disciplines (Gjhvsf!4). The ExactSciences have a low relative usage frequency and weobserved a high CPU between 20-40 Swiss Francs (~20 – 40$). Carolina Consortium recommends adetailed analysis of these titles with CPUs over 20$ (8).Fwbmvbujpo!pg!uif!uisff!Cjh!Efbmt!gps!bmm!ejtdjqmjoftIn a second step, the study of the Big Deals wasexpanded to all disciplines. Around 83% of thejournals are the “collection titles”. Those “collectiontitles” selected by the publisher are often swappedfor others. Hence, the library has permanent accessonly to the 17% self-selected titles. The studyshowed that there are large differences between theindividual disciplines. 40% of the e-journals areassigned to Medicine (26%) and the Life Sciences(14%). A high frequency of use was observed forjournals within the disciplines of Medicine,Economics, Psychology and Education, whereasjournals in the Exact Sciences had high costs andlow usage. The low usage numbers are causedmainly by the “collection titles” with an averagefrequency of use of 30% (Gjhvsf! 5). There is nomatch between costs and usage even for the “coretitles”. Despite higher usage compared to the“collection titles”, usage does not justify the costs(Gjhvsf!6). Conclusion and next stepsThe evaluation increases the transparency in costs,frequency of use and options for long-termpreservation. In addition, the evaluationdemonstrates the necessity to optimize the productmanagement and the regular evaluation of usagedata for the subscribed e-journals.Only 16% of the titles in the STM area have morethan 1000 successful full-text article requests peryear and in particular journals in the Exact Scienceshave high CPU. This indicates that there are manyexpensive journals for specific research topics withina small user community. Small packages of non-profit publisher’s show a five times higher frequencyof use than the Big Deals and are 2 times more oftenused than individual subscriptions (Gjhvsf! 2).Therefore these results are important indicators ofthe relevance of the journals for the research groupsand students at the University of Bern. It facilitatesany decision concerning agreements with publishers.The Big Deals have the highest portion of e-journalsin the STM area. However, these bundles containmainly poorly used “collection titles”. Only the “coretitles” chosen by the University of Bern arefrequently used. Southern Illinois UniversityCarbondale (SIUC) and the University of Oregonlibrary cancelled the agreements with the three BigDeals and negotiated new licenses in 2009 and 2010.Figure 4. Relative use for the individual disciplinesdivided in “core titles” and “collection titles”. Figure 3. Distribution of the relative frequency of useon individual subjects.:Journal of EAHIL 2016; Vol. 12 (1): 6-9 Increasing transparency for e-journal subscriptions and Big Deals Recently they drew the consequences and took thedecision to leave the Big Deals. The number ofinterlibrary loan requests increased, howeverdemand for content from non-subscribed journalspreviously available via the Big Deal is significantlyless than expected. Only a small percentage ofpurported demand translates into interlibrary loanrequests. In conclusion they had several stable yearsof collections budgets and regained the crucialimpact of the library on the collection, withoutaffecting the research efforts (9). Concrete actions at the University library of Bern aredifficult to determine partly due to the limitedflexibility in renegotiation of the strict and complexcontracts with publishers. However, there are twoways for further steps. First, the decision for thecontinuation of individual subscriptions is not tied tomulti-year contracts and can be done individually bythe subject area after consulting the research groupsconcerned. However, cancellation of the contractswith Big Deals requires alternative ways to get accessfor required articles and requires a detailedquantitative and qualitative evaluation of all the titleswithin the Big Deals. Therefore, in a next step theevaluation will consider several years (e.g. 2011-2014) and values for quality and usefulness will bedetermined and evaluated. In conclusion, theevaluation in the STM area for the year 2014 enablesmore accurate statements about the frequency inuse, archive access of e-journals and related costs.The evaluation of uses for individual disciplinesforms the basis for further decisions together withthe persons and research groups involved to findcost-efficient ways for access to e-journals. Received on 5 February 2016.Accepted on 16 February 2016.REFERENCES1. Botero C, Carrico S, Tennant MR. Usingcomparative online journal usage studies toassess the Big Deal. Library Resources &Technical Services. 2008;52(2):61-8.2. Poynder R. The Big Deal: not price but cost.Information Today. 2011;28(8):1-33.3. Frazier K. What’s the Big Deal? Serials Librarian.2005;48(1-2):49-59.4. Rolnik Z. Big Deal = Good Deal? SerialsLibrarian. 2009;57(3):194-8.5. Lemley T, Li J. “Big Deal” Journal subscriptionpackages: Are they worth the cost? Journal ofElectronic Resources in Medical Libraries.2015;12(1):1-10.6. Blecic DD, Wiberley SE, Fiscella JB, Bahnmaier-Blaszczak S, Lowery R. Deal or no deal?Evaluating Big Deals and their journals. DeepBlue. 2013:178-93.7. COUNTER: Counting Online Usage ofNeTworked Electronic Resources. Available at www.projectcounter.org. [accessed 18 January 2016]. 8. Bucknall T, Bernhardt B, Johnson A. Using costper use to assess Big Deals. Serials Rev.2014;40(3):194-6.9. Nabe J, Fowler DC. Leaving the “Big Deal”. Fiveyears later. Serials Librarian. 2015;69(1):20-8.Figure 5. CPUs of the Big Deals for different disci-plines divided in “core titles” and “collection titles”. 

Increasing transparency for e-journal subscriptions and Big Deals. A comprehensive assessment of e-journals in Science, Technology and Medicine (STM)

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Increasing transparency for e-journal subscriptions and Big Deals. A comprehensive assessment of e-journals in Science, Technology and Medicine (STM)

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