November 19, 2024
As Brock community members are aware, the university underwent an intensive budget mitigation exercise in order to reduce the operating deficit for the fiscal year 2024-2025. As a result, the library acquisitions budget was frozen at the 2023-2024 level ($5.75 million). This translates to a projected $250,000 shortfall due to the perpetual rise in the costs of library subscription prices.
Background
During the summer of 2024, the library conducted a comprehensive review of our collection expenditures. To have a balanced budget, we determined that we need to reduce spending on both journal subscriptions and books/e-books.
As shared in our June update, a significant structural challenge is the ‘Big Deal’ model: Major publishers bundle their catalogue of journal subscriptions into large, expensive packages. At Brock, the Big Deals with Elsevier, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, Springer, and Sage exert outsized pressure on our constrained budget, even when the data demonstrates that researchers are not using a majority of these bundled journal titles.
Decision and Impact
The outcome of this evidence-based evaluation is that we are cancelling the Springer Big Deal subscription, effective January 1, 2025. Our analysis indicated that cancelling the Springer package (~2,100 journal titles) would help us achieve the necessary savings while having a lesser impact on Brock’s research and teaching when compared to other packages. Relative to our other Big Deals, Springer has the poorest value proposition, with relatively lower usage but at a high cost.
As a result, the Brock community will lose subscription access to Springer publications from 2025 onwards. Researchers will continue to be able to request new Springer articles using the expanded interlibrary loan service. Open Access versions of articles can often be located using a number of alternative approaches.
Please note:
- Permanent access to all Springer journal content from 2024 and earlier will remain available through Omni and Springer Journals Online.
- Springer Nature journals are not impacted; these subscriptions are managed separately.
- The Library is currently exploring individually subscribing to a small number of high-use Springer journals. Once determined, this information will be shared on the Subscriptions and Budget FAQ page.
Cancelling the Springer package will achieve about half of our budget reduction target. The remaining savings will be found by reducing our spending on new books and e-books, and cancelling a number of smaller, low-use subscriptions.
Communication and Next Steps
At Senate meetings this fall, I shared the state of the collections budget and the challenging context of the profit-driven scholarly publishing industry. We had productive discussions about the unsustainable ecosystem and the frustrations of academics worldwide. The Library continues to advocate for and support Open Access publishing as the main path to effect change.
We appreciate your support for the Library and your patience with this process. If you have any questions, please reach out to me at nnolan@brocku.ca
Regards,
Nicole Nolan
University Librarian
Brock University Library