NEWS FEATURE ‘‘
The practical effect of the financial situation is that some libraries are being asked to cut 10-20 per cent of their content budget. – David Prosser
He said this shift by academics away from mainstream publishers “is still relatively small scale” but could be accelerated by two factors. First that “an institution that is sacking academic and other staff isn’t going to be overly impressed when Elsevier says, ‘we feel your pain, so it’s just a two per cent increase this year’ ” which could fuel academic dissatisfaction and secondly that a move away from big deals could allow some of these other models to thrive.
A long year Negotiations for new big deals will start in March ready for offer in December. Before then there may be some friction around other publishers - discussions with the American Chemical Society and IEEE have been difficult. In his blog post Peter Barr said: “The December 2025 water-
David Prosser.
margin, or to allow revenues to fall and keep the profit margin. But if Elsevier loses UK revenue, it will be more than offset by sales in China and the Middle East.
Culture problem Another reason why Elsevier doesn’t have to change is that it forecasts growth in the demand for article publication every year. Submissions to Elsevier journals tripled in 10 years to 2022 when 2.6 million were submitted, and 600,000 pub- lished. “It is all to do with research culture and people wanting to publish in prestigious titles,” David said. “I’ve been saying for 20 years that scholarly communications is not about the com- munications of scholarship. It’s about getting these quality marks against your name. “A lot has been done to try and decouple the publication venue from the quality mark. Like the Research Excellence Framework saying the quality of the research is important, not where it is published. But many people still believe it’s where you publish that’s important. And as long as that men- tality remains, large publishers will have a constant supply of authors.”
Culture solution “There are increasing numbers of academics who are trying to move away from that system – new journals being formed, editorial boards who have walked away. New diamond open access models.”
Spring 2025
shed sees the end of the majority of the UK’s largest TAs, the economics and dynamics for the next generation of deals has changed. It remains to be seen whether the major academic publishers can respond as the partners they claim to be, or whether we need to look to a new approach entirely.” An Elsevier spokesperson said: “Through the JISC consor- tium we have an agreement with over 150 institutions in the UK. We are aware of the difficult financial conditions some institutions are under and have worked closely with JISC to provide relief and we’ll continue to work with them on a case-by-case basis to support UK institutions. Through this collaborative process, University of Sheffield, University of York and University of Surrey have all signed individual agreements or are in discussions with us to continue access to Elsevier published journals.”
Sheffield University Library. INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL 13
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