What’s the Big Deal? Counting What Counts Cathal McCauley University Librarian, MU LIR Annual Seminar, December 2018

Background 1997 MLIS thesis “Ownership Vs Access” In academic and special libraries for 15+ years University Librarian since 2008 Founding Director of the Irish University Libraries Collaboration Centre (IULCC) – current IReL vehicle Co-chair of the national Elsevier Negotiating Group One of the IUA’s representatives on IReL Review Steering Group Irish representative on the EUA’s Big Deals Expert Group Irish representative on Plan S implementation group convened by JISC MU Library

Urgent need to change scholarly publishing Costs soaring Outlandish profit margins Concentrated control of Top 5 Bad deal for tax payers and other funders In Ireland alone funding per student down 50% Distorts research – encourages bad practices MU Library

Transformative Deals “Corridor of transformation” to full OA Source: https://www.paintingwithdiamondskits.com/BUMBLEBEE-TRANSFORMER-Painting-With-Diamonds-Kit_p_218.html “Corridor of transformation” to full OA Transitional Open Access Transparent Cost Constraining Licensing/copyright important See: http://esac-initiative.org/guidelines MU Library

The limitations of what we currently count Measure the wrong things (at least when it comes to content deals) Often misleading e.g. long tails Not sure what is really being counted Can lead to crude decisions What is being missed OA and “other” sources of content Publisher-centric and core to “Big Deals” Source: https://www.liquor.com/recipes/dale-degroff-bourbon-old-fashioned/ MU Library

What should we start counting? Publication output by corresponding author Publication output by title Publication output by publisher Access data i.e. Paywalled, OA (what type) License types (% and trends) Article Level Metrics (ALMs) See: https://sparcopen.org/our-work/article-level-metrics Source: https://libguides.rug.nl/umcg/openaccess MU Library

Areas for attention Avoid repeating the mistakes of the past – publishers “vertically integrating” Measures to link content spend to student/research success Inform reward systems to link “open research” with academic progression New collection strategies (access and evaluation) Evolving role of e-resource librarians and other staff Source: http://www.homeandabove.com/sneak-peak-take-a-closer-look-into-our-new-collection/ MU Library

Cathal.McCauley@mu.ie @cathalmccauley Go raibh maith agaibh Thank You Cathal.McCauley@mu.ie @cathalmccauley MU Library