Deal or No Deal? Evaluating Big Deals and Their Journals

A journal business model to replace the big deal?

In the mid-1990s the idea of offering library users a large package of journals at less cost than purchasing subscriptions separately seemed too good an opportunity to be missed, not only for librarians but also for publishers. The advent of the " Big Deal " promised a glorious future for users of journals, for publishers and for librarians. Why has the dream gone sour? As one who has shared an...

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...

E-Journals and the Big Deal: A Review of the Literature

Impact of Electronic Journals on Document Delivery Services

Collection management policies of libraries were mainly shaped by in-house use of materials in the past. Yet the emergence of electronic journals and their availability through publishers’ or aggregators’ web sites is changing this practice considerably. Libraries are no longer limited with the “one source – one user” model. This paper investigates the potential impact of the availability of el...

Consumer Perceptions of Deals Biasing Effects of Varying Deal Prices

Some brands in the market opt to offer a single “deal” price (e.g., Pepsi brand soft drink at $1.09 every alternate week), whereas others opt to offer 2 or more deal prices (e.g., Coca-Cola brand soft drink at $0.99 in Week 1 and $1.19 in Week 3). It was hypothesized that offering multiple deal prices is likely to result in underestimation of deal frequency and average deal price, which will bi...