North American Universities Increasingly Cancel Publisher Packages

A growing number of libraries are unbundling their subscriptions to the full suite of publishers’ journals, opting for limited titles to save on costs.

Written byDiana Kwon

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Tomorrow (June 12), Florida State University will head into negotiations with the publisher Elsevier to see how it can resolve a pricing issue. Back in April, FSU announced that it would not renew a so-called “big deal” with Elsevier in 2019, due to its “high and ever-increasing cost,” and would instead subscribe to a subset of the most-needed journals. The university’s move represents the latest example of academic libraries walking away from these comprehensive and expensive subscriptions, which include all or most of a publisher’s catalog, and instead signing up for a la carte titles.

Big deals started to become popular in the late 1990s. Prior to these agreements, librarians would only subscribe to the subset of journals they needed. Such a package deal benefits ...

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Meet the Author

Diana Kwon
Diana is a freelance science journalist who covers the life sciences, health, and academic life. She’s a regular contributor to The Scientist and her work has appeared in several other publications, including Scientific American, Knowable, and Quanta. Diana was a former intern at The Scientist and she holds a master’s degree in neuroscience from McGill University. She’s currently based in Berlin, Germany.
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