of the sector has had to do that in the last year, then that is going to be high up on the list of things to worry about.” But rather than diverting attention away from publisher deals it is creating pres- sure. Not only is there not enough money to continue paying publishers what they demand, but three institutions have now gone public about not extending their big deals with Elsevier.
In December 2024 – Sheffield, Surrey and York were the only institutions not to renew contracts with Elsevier. They are now being watched closely by the sector and Ann says: “So far, for them, it is work- ing. And I think there are early indications that, in fact, the sky hasn’t fallen in.” When SCONUL published its member survey a month later, it showed that 60 per cent of HE libraries are also contem- plating ditching the big deals.
Librarians have threatened to walk away from these deals in the past, but didn’t. Now that they have, will publishers listen?
Negotiations
Jisc is now in the process of negotiating new agreements with the five big publishers. Ann said: “What Jisc has done on our behalf, with our agreement and consent, is to make some very big asks of the pub- lishers including changing their business models and cutting their costs. One of the key issues is the ‘big deal’ inflation – the constant adding of things that are not wanted. The framework that Jisc has put in place, this ethical publishing frame- work, is very demanding of publishers. I expect some will step forward to meet as many of those requests as they can, but others won’t.”
Ann points out that libraries are in a better position going into negotiations than they have been partly because of the desperate financial situation: “It is worth bearing in mind is that three quarters of our members are restructuring this year and there is only so much bandwidth for radical change. But then there is also only so much money, the spending envelope is definitely smaller. Universities are in flux, massively. You’ve got academics losing jobs, merging departments, departments being closed, people feeling at risk. In my experience, when people feel under threat, they find taking risks less straightforward. So there are push and pull factors here. “What we do is talk to our members about are the possible models for them – the opportunities and the drawbacks. That conversation is very, very live for everyone.”
Opting out of these deals isn’t straight- forward politically, practically, or even financially because, Ann says: “It doesn’t mean that everything you’ve spent with, let’s say Elsevier, is saved. You still have to fund the alternative forms of provision.
24 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL Ann Rossiter.
And then what does this look like three years down the road – that’s a really important part of the picture.”
Publisher confidence
One story is that publishers don’t need to worry about HE dissatisfaction. Publish- ers have made Open Access models as profitable as subscription models and they tell their investors that academia’s publish or perish culture drives the investment story.
“Inherent in that description is a sense in which publishers are a neutral partner responding to the needs of the sector,” Ann says. “I would beg to differ. There is a financial incentive to this expansion in publishing output. Shareholders want to
see this growth and I don’t think the driver is demand from academia. The growth comes through increasing the number of journals which are bundled into the big deals and which institutions pay for with the year-on-year big deal inflation. So one of the things that we have asked for in the negotiations is smaller deals without that long tail of journals that don’t provide much value to the institution. We want to see those go.”
Tipping point? “Libraries have been very clear for a long time about the lack of ethics in the academic publishing models and conver- sations with academics about how to change this without causing problems for them is continuously ramping up. It’s also an international conversation, not just in the UK. When it comes down to it, that con- versation is only part of the way through. “There is still a job to be done but I don’t think if it’s convincing academics that the model is wrong. I think they know that. I think the job is now to convince them there’s an alternative.
“And there are so many disruptive factors in HE at the moment. The financial crisis is only one of them. AI is another. Alongside this we have an academic publisher com- munity that is attached to old fashioned business models. Together these factors offer scope for doing things very differently. I think in the next five years things will look very radically different.”
AI
“We’ve got AI tools being developed – but it is challenging to evaluate whether these are value for money, what they do, or even
www.sconul.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/library-technologies Autumn 2025
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