What Do Libraries Keep When They Cancel the Big Deal?

[Heather Piwowar]

Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe has a new article in the Scholarly Kitchen blog entitled What Do Libraries Keep When They Cancel the Big Deal?

The article looks at trends titles kept when 7 universities walked away from their Elsevier Big Deals.  Only 12 titles were kept across all institutions, and a variety of factors emerged as decision makers for these universities.

More analysis will follow: the article is the first in a series.

If you have thoughts about the article, please do share :)

Heather

[Federico Leva]

Heather Piwowar, 14/07/20 17:12:

> If you have thoughts about the article, please do share :)

Although it's stated that «few libraries assert that open access
availability is driving their cancellations», I was naturally curious to
see whether those lucky titles were especially bad at green open access.

I tried a simplistic search on Lens (sorry for the URL):

https://is.gd/H5x6Qr

<https://www.lens.org/lens/search/scholar/list?q=source.title:(%22Biological%20Conservation%22)%20OR%20source.title:(%22Biosensors%20and%20Bioelectronics%22)%20OR%20source.title:(%22Computers%20in%20Human%20Behavior%22)%20OR%20source.title:(%22Early%20Childhood%20Research%20Quarterly%22)%20OR%20source.title:(%22Food%20Chemistry%22)%20OR%20source.title:(%22Journal%20of%20Business%20Research%22)%20OR%20source.title:(%22Journal%20of%20Financial%20Economics%22)%20OR%20source.title:(%22Journal%20of%20Molecular%20Biology%22)%20OR%20source.title:(%22Trends%20in%20Ecology%20and%20Evolution%22)%20OR%20source.title:(%22Personality%20and%20Individual%20Differences%22)%20OR%20source.title:(%22Social%20Science%20and%20Medicine%22)%20OR%20source.title:(%22Water%20Research%20%22)&p=0&n=10&s=_score&d=%2B&f=false&e=false&l=en&authorField=author&dateFilterField=publishedYear&presentation=false&preview=&stemmed=true&useAuthorId=false&publisher.must=Elsevier%20Limited&publisher.must=Elsevier%20BV&publisher.must=Elsevier%20Inc.&publisher.must=Elsevier&publishedYear.from=2018&publishedYear.to=2019>

If this is remotely correct, out of over 6k articles per year in 2018
and 2019, these journals had ~700 hybrid or bronze and ~300 green OA,
which does seem a bit low although it's hard to compare. It would be
nice to see targeted green OA campaigns for the titles in highest demand
(à la John Dove: <https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/?oldid=80380>), but
maybe I'm going off topic.

Federico