Beth R Bernhardt
Electronic Resources Librarian
UNC Greensboro
Carolina Consortium
 Started 2004 with meetings and signed first license in
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1/1/2005
Members are any College, University or Community
College in North and South Carolina
Membership is free
Buyers Club
Started with three big deals and have over 70+ deals
schools can join into
CC Big Deals with spend > 250,000
 ACS
 Cambridge University Press
 Elsevier
 Oxford University Press
 Sage
 Springer
 Wiley-Blackwell
CC Big Deals with Spend <
$250,000
 BEPress (bought by deGruyter) (19 CC schools)
 Brill (22)
 Duke (12)
 Elsevier College Editions (14)
 IGI Global (3)
 Mary Ann Liebert (56)
Statistical Collection
 Collected COUNTER statistics for all schools and most
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of the big journal deals.
Looked at usage statistics from 2009, 2010 and 2011
Pulled total pricing information
Combined PDF and HTML full text views
Calculated Cost Per Use
Looked at price change and usage change between
2009-2011
Cambridge University Press
 Has one of the worst Cost Per Use (CPU)
 By far the lowest overall use
 Low rate of usage increase
 Poor license terms
 Must keep takeovers
 Most subscribe to launches at 50% list price
 2.7% of spend and 1.9% of use
Cambridge University Press -Example
 Small private school
 Will pay about $5300 for 2013
 2011 = 48 uses; $103 CPU
 24 titles used; 272 unused
 No titles used more than 6 times
 3 inexpensive titles account for 13 of the 48 uses. They
Cost for these 3 titles would be $526.
Cambridge University Press – UNC System school
 Will pay about $7200 for 2013 big deal
 2011 data= 457 uses, $14.95 CPU
 3 year change = +15% price; -41% use
 80 titles used; 316 unused
 Only 10 titles used 10 times or more
 Those 10 account for 243 of 457 uses (53%)
 Direct subs to those 10 for 2013 cost $13,063
2011 title by title usage
Title
457
Development and Psychopathology
104
1
541
541
Public Health Nutrition
25
2
1280
1821
Parasitology
22
1943
3764
Journal of Fluid Mechanics
20
4654
8418
Bulletin of the Australian Mathematical
Society
17
503
8921
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
15
1055
9976
International Psychogeriatrics
10
889
10865
Journal of Social Policy
10
569
11434
Proceedings of the Edinburgh
Mathematical Society
10
395
11829
Psychological Medicine
10
1234
13063
price
10
total
Elsevier Freedom Collection
 Anemic growth over 2 years (0.8%)
 2011 CPU 3rd best of 6
 Price Change 19%, Usage change .8%
 29.5% of cost, 30.3% of use in the CC
 Highest average cost
 Very high number of Highly Used Titles
 Least number of schools – but the Highest use
Oxford University Press
 Has lowest CPU
 28 schools
 5.2% of cost, 12.3% of use
 Publisher is flexible with schools that have financial
hardships
Sage
 2nd lowest CPU
 6.5% of cost; 10.8% of use
 18 schools
Springer
 38 schools, most of any large CC big deal
 19.7% of spend, 17.8% of usage
 2nd lowest inflation rate
 Deal structure makes it hard to not belong to the deal
Wiley-Blackwell
 Biggest CC spend
 33 schools, 2nd most of any large big deals
 2nd highest CPU
 36.4% of spend, 26.8% of use
 8% price increase , 15% increase in use
WB – Big system school
 2011 paid $50,870; 1186 uses
 345 titles used; 1817 unused
 21 titles used 10 or more times; their sub cost is
$43,078
 Those titles account for 375 uses (32%)
Next Steps to Developing a CC Plan
 Pull 2012 stats
 Adding 2012 cost/use data
 Prioritizing
 Publishers
 Costs/issues
 Negotiating with publishers
 Coordinating with UNC system
 Collective action vs coordinated action vs individual action
 Make recommendations to individual schools about
adding/dropping deals
Thank You
Beth Bernhardt
Electronic Resources Librarian
UNC Greensboro
[email protected]