The purpose of our study is to investigate the decision-making process of librarians involved in the cancellation of large ejournal packages, often referred to as \u201cBig Deals\u201d. The political economy of academic publishing, and in particular the business model followed by large publishers, which allows them to charge increasingly unsustainable prices for large ejournal packages, has become a topic of vigorous academic discussion and concern of library collection managers. Because of the pricing structure of these packages, it is difficult to break apart the packages cost effectively by buying back well-used titles without cancelling lesser used ones as well as some highly used, or useful, ones. Librarians are often conflicted about how to make these decisions, either based solely on quantitative determinations of value or more subjective criteria.<\/p>\r\n
Little attention has been paid to the strategies undertaken by academic librarians to respond to the pressures of the publishing market. This project will fill this gap by studying the practices and politics behind the collection management strategies librarians use to navigate the scholarly communication ecosystem.<\/p>\r\n
To explore this topic, we are studying the process of breaking apart, or unbundling, ejournal packages. The overarching objective of our study is to provide insight into the difficulties librarians face in accomplishing this task in the context of institutional support and pressure by users to provide comprehensive access to journals. To accomplish this we will interview librarians directly involved in the cancellation process as well as senior library administrators who are responsible for setting library policies. To get a fuller picture of the impact of these decisions on users, we will also interview faculty members and PhD students from different research and teaching areas. In short, we will comparatively examine the experiences of Canadian academic libraries that have recently attempted to unbundle Big Deals within the context of library decision-making models, library users\u2019 demands for access to journals, and the support of library policy makers during the cancellation process<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The purpose of our study is to investigate the decision-making process of librarians involved in the cancellation of large ejournal packages, often referred to as \u201cBig Deals\u201d. The political economy of academic publishing, and in particular the business model followed by large publishers, which allows them to charge increasingly unsustainable prices for large ejournal packages, … <\/p>\n