What's the Big Deal?

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

Pick's Theorem - What's the Big Deal?

Of course, finding the infimum is computationally harder than answering the question of whether the infimum is less than or equal to some fixed value, but mathematically the problems are equivalent. By a standard compactness argument (what a complex analyst would call a normal family argument), the infimum in (IP) will be attained. By rescaling, we can assume this infimum is 1, and then the Pic...

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...

Nosocomial Infections: What’s the Big Deal? Nursing

Nosocomial infection (infection acquired after 48 hours of hospitalization, or within 2 weeks of a previous hospitalization) is becoming a problem of global significance. In human hospitals, prevention of nosocomial infection has become paramount, and the emergence of multiple drug resistant (MDR) bacteria has made prevention even more difficult. According to the World Health Organization repor...

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 ...