What's the “big deal”, and why is it a bad deal for universities?

Beware Publishers Bearing Gifts: Why the "big Deal" Is a Bad Deal for Universities

Big Deal - good deal? Or is there a better deal?

Deal or No Deal? Evaluating Big Deals and Their Journals

This paper presents methods to develop metrics that compare Big Deal journal packages and the journals within those packages. Deal-level metrics guide selection of a Big Deal for termination. Journal-level metrics guide selection of individual subscriptions from journals previously provided by a terminated deal. The paper argues that while the proposed metrics provide helpful quantitative data ...

An Orderly Retreat from the Big Deal: Is It Possible for Consortia?

The struggle to find cost-effective alternative approaches to scholarly publishing resulting in a meaningful change to funding models, as opposed to simply reshuffling the funding deck, continues in full force. One debate within this larger context centers on the merits of the Big Deal which is " any online aggregation of e-content that a publisher, aggregator, or vendor offers for sale or leas...

Evaluating big deal journal bundles.

Large commercial publishers sell bundled online subscriptions to their entire list of academic journals at prices significantly lower than the sum of their á la carte prices. Bundle prices differ drastically between institutions, but they are not publicly posted. The data that we have collected enable us to compare the bundle prices charged by commercial publishers with those of nonprofit socie...