which it would happen.”
But asked if the recent rejections her- alded a split in the sector between ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ for the big deals and if this meant the procurement process might need oversight from regulators or even pol- iticians, he says: “It is a big question. And I’d answer with another question: what are we asking for? What is it that we want a regulator or politician to do? What would an intervention look like?
“Because politicians like a solution, they
don’t want another complex problem. And to give them a reasonably clear solution you would need universities to be unified and clear in what that vision was. And you could look for that, but institutions are not even unified internally. The library may say ‘we want to cancel the big deals’ while the administration says ‘no, we want you to keep them’; so there’s not even agreement within institutions as to what the solutions are.
“We would be keen to be part of any conversation that seeks to gain consensus on what a regulatory solution would look like. But I’m a bit cynical as to whether this is an area where there is the will amongst regulators or politicians to en- gage positively.”
Regulation problem
Some university librarians say that regula- tion may be needed precisely because the sector cannot reach a position on its own. They believe that it is distrust and competi- tion between universities not diverse views over the merits of publishing models that has stood in the way of value for money in publisher negotiations.
But David says that whatever the reasons for wanting regulation, if it took the form of centralised purchasing (rather than other forms like clarifying guidance on value-for-money or APCs for example) it would always come at a cost to flexibility and diversity. “Let’s say that at some high level, some- body says, okay, let’s deal with the big publishers and get access to everybody in the UK to all of Elsevier’s material (such as the Indian One Nation, One Subscription initiative has done). In that scenario my fear is that it entrenches existing big pub- lishers and gives them a dominant position making it harder for others to move in and for new models to work. Everything is funnelled straight to the big publishers and there’s less wiggle room for change.” So, does he think that mobilising the sector’s buying power will always offset flexibility? “There’s a danger there,” he says. “There would be a reduction in flexibility, it would be even harder for new models to succeed, and for new publishers to come through. If there is a huge sum of money being top sliced so the UK can have these deals,
16 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
David Prosser.
inevitably it’s going to be with the biggest publishers and there will be people who are outside of those agreements. And you see already that there’s only finite capacity within JISC to negotiate deals.” Having said that, he didn’t rule out central- ised purchasing as one option to regulate the relationship between publishers and univer- sities: “I think it’s one of those things that’s always worth exploring and seeing how it would work. If there are clear benefits that can be shown to offset the risk of ossifying the market in an unhelpful way.”
Policing, not regulating
Where he does see room for top-down action is in ensuring that those universities rejecting deals have a diversity of viable options. Last year Ann Rossiter, Execu-
tive Director of Sconul, told Information Professional that universities shouldn’t see publishers as a “neutral partner respond- ing to the needs of the sector” but as organ- isations that increase profits. Similarly, David warns that the sector should not expect to be left in peace to experiment with publishing models. He says that there were lots of examples in the past of publishers “trying it on”, add- ing: “Certainly, publishers have tried to use post cancellation access as a negotiating tool – to say we might give you a slightly better deal if you drop all of your current entitlements under that. Or supplying updated versions of contracts and not flagging changed clauses. And there are publishers who are very keen to put restric- tions on what customers – libraries – can
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