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

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...

Open Access, library and publisher competition, and the evolution of general commerce

Discussions of the economics of scholarly communication are usually devoted to Open Access, rising journal prices, publisher profits, and boycotts. That ignores what seems a much more important development in this market. Publishers, through the oft-reviled Big Deal packages, are providing much greater and more egalitarian access to the journal literature, an approximation to true Open Access. ...

Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts: Diplomatic Lobbying and the Early Settlement of WTO Disputes

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...

The Reading Crisis in Iran (During the 1960s and 1970s): A Critical Discourse Analysis

Purpose: Reading is one of the challenging problems in contemporary Iran. After the Persian Constitutional Revolution (1905-1911), reading becomes one of the factors that Iranians considered it necessary for modernization and development. For this reason, most people, even who were literate, had no desire to read. This situation was unpleasant for intellectuals, publishers and cultural activist...