UC-Elsevier Deal Stops Inflation

After an intense negotiation, the University of California (UC) system has renewed its bundled deal with leading STM publisher Elsevier—and UC is paying less than before. The five-year agreement, through the California Digital Library (CDL), includes all Cell Press titles. Cell Press had become the target of a boycott initiated by two UC faculty members, Peter Walter and Keith Yamamoto, over pricing issues ( see News, LJ 11/15/03 , p. 18).

Although UC officials declined to release the actual dollar figures, a letter sent to UC faculty stated that the deal "accommodates the University's deteriorating budget situation" and that the "negotiated price arrested for now the price inflation that has been common in this market."

UC–Santa Barbara university librarian Sarah Pritchard added that the new price was less than the price UC paid last year. As usual with a bundled deal, there are inflationary caps for each year of the five-year contract. "At the end of five years, we will be paying fractionally more than we were paying last year," Pritchard said.

"There are a lot of advantages to the group deal," Pritchard explained. "If we had to subscribe individually, we'd have a two-thirds loss in content." That loss would have been smaller on larger campuses, such as UCLA and UC-Berkeley, she noted, adding that the UC system's 11 library directors worked together to compromise on the title list.

While the UC deal represents support, albeit tempered, for Elsevier's "big deal" bundled package, the Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN) announced that it would not be renewing its bundled deal with Elsevier.

In a memo sent to the faculties of TRLN members Duke University, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, TRLN officials said that the decision not to renew the deal followed "months of unsuccessful negotiations" with Elsevier.

The TRLN deal, which offered access to approximately 1300 journals, expired on December 31, 2003. According to the memo, each "TRLN library will now make individual arrangements for Elsevier journal access on its own campus." That means "the loss of electronic access to the body of titles shared throughout TRLN, resulting in a reduction in access to 400–500 journals per campus."