Stephen Bosch, Barbara Albee, and Sion Romaine

Can libraries afford open access? LJ’s latest Periodicals Price Survey examines the state of the market.

Two years into the pandemic, only flat budgets and price increases seem predictable.

Having spent over a decade adjusting to a “new normal” of serials inflation, harsh budget cuts, and a redirection of spending from collections to services, arguably few if any libraries were prepared for the turmoil wrought by a pandemic. We have shifted to a new abnormal. How will libraries survive and thrive after the pandemic subsides? What might our new abnormal look like?

Higher education continues to grapple with an uncertain future of flat or declining student enrollment and mounting financial pressures. Library budgets are for the most part flat or diminishing, leaving libraries to yet again battle the terrible twins of cost inflation and revenue stagnation. Many libraries are cutting continuing expenditures by cancelling or breaking up journal packages and buying only those titles for which use or demand justifies the price. Others are aggressively renegotiating contracts with publishers to reduce ongoing costs.

For the past decade, libraries have battled declining university budgets and increasing serials expenditures. With each Big Deal package renewal or cancellation, librarians and publishers have asked themselves: Did I make the best deal? Did I make the right deal? Recent developments in open access promise to bring major reform to academic publishing and, with that, new challenges and opportunities to the way that librarians and publishers choose to deal.