NEWS FEATURE ‘‘


The primary driver for most institutions has been the financial situation. But I think people are looking at whether they can turn this from just being a purely financial decision into something that has some benefits.


A library director who did not want to be named said he expected a third wave of institutions was likely to reject deals over the next year.


AI versus status quo


An important issue for librarians and their institutions is what the future might hold for academic clients of the big publish- ers. RELX, the owner of Elsevier, has seen its share price fall by over 40 per cent over the last year as investors fear that the AI bonus promised by data companies may not materialise. But whatever its investors think, the company still expects


AI to wrest more value from its content and clients – includ- ing academia. What this means for big deals – also known as transfor- mative agreements, which were supposed to enable a shift to open access academic publishing – is hard to tell.


Horse’s mouth On 13 February there was a Q&A session between RELX and the city analysts who advise the company’s big investors. Christophe Cherblanc, a European Media analyst at Bernstein, asked­them­who­the­“addressable­population”­was­for­AI­tools­ like LeapSpace and how the pricing will work. Erik­Engstrom,­ Chief­ Executive­ Officer­ of­RELX­ said­ the­ ­ addressable­ market”­ was­ between­ 10,000­ and­


“potential­


15,000 institutional customers but added: “When it comes to individual use people refer to the total number of researchers in the world as a little bit above 10 million. That’s the scale of this. And if you look at the question of how do we price them, our approach here is to price this platform based on scale of institution and research intensity of the institution.


February-March 2026


We are also likely to come up with an individual researcher subscription­option.”


Slowly slowly He was optimistic that researchers would want it. “The indi- cation we’re getting from our customers, the feedback we’re getting in terms of the value-adds and the excitement is very strong.” But he added: “Everything in the STM industry goes a little more slowly than it does in other industries, partly because of how they think of funding and spending and budget… academic institutions are typically slightly more involved and take longer. But we are very positive on the ability for this platform to continue to add value to our customers and meaningfully impact our long-term value-add and growth trajectory in this division, but it’s going to come through very­gradually.”


Alternative universe


Elsevier clients have no real prospect of gaining leverage over the company. This month RELX reported that demand for publication is skyrocketing with more than 4.2m article submissions in 2025, an increase of 20 per cent on 2024. Of these it has published 795,000 articles, an increase of 10 per cent on 2024. The UK negotiating consortium may be the largest in the world, but it still makes up a tiny proportion of its global income. And if nine of its 150 or so institutional UK clients reject the deal, it may not register. But if life outside these big read and publish deals is sus- tainable then others may choose it too. IP


INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL 13


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