USING COST-PER-USE TO ASSESS BIG DEALS Tim Bucknall (UNCG)

THE CAROLINA CONSORTIUM Buyer’s Club for NC and SC academic libraries Includes 149 community colleges, public universities, and private colleges and universities All deals are opt-in No central funding No formal organization, structure, resources, or committees Nearly 100 current deals (dbs, journals, streaming media, ebooks, discovery tools, library services, etc.) Over 1110 participants (Averaging about 7.5 schools per deal, and about 11 deals per school) Annual cost avoidance of about $240 million

CC BIG DEALS The CC began with 3 Big Deals in Wiley, Blackwell, and Springer Current Big Deals include ACS (29 schools), ASTM (5), BE Press (19), Brill (23), CUP (22), Duke UP (12), Elsevier College Editions (14), Elsevier Science Direct (14 NC), IGI Global (3), Mary Ann Liebert (56), OUP (28), Sage Premier (22), Springer (47), Wiley (37).

EVALUATING BIG DEAL USAGE AND COST DATA No coordination. Each school responsible for their own data and decision making. Some schools very data driven. Others never looked at data at all. May 2012 CC Meeting. General agreement that we are better off sharing data. I asked vendors for 3 years of data for all CC schools in deals with gross cost over $250,000 (ACS, CUP, Elsevier, OUP, Sage, Springer, Wiley). April 2013 CC Meeting. Shared and discussed data. Summer Contacted schools with high CPU’s. Fall Large budget cuts for state schools. Some new schools join Big Deals. Some of the highest CPU schools drop out.

CONSORTIUM USE OF CPU CPU establishes the framework for decision making, but is certainly not the only factor considered. Which other factors are considered? It depends on which CPU we are talking about. 1. Deal level CPU 2. School level CPU 3. Title level CPU

USING CPU AT THE DEAL LEVEL Which deal has the best/worst CPU overall? Which deals are getting better/worse over time? Useful at the publisher/consortium level. Less so at the school level.

USING CPU AT THE SCHOOL LEVEL Is my CPU higher/lower than CPU’s of other schools? Is my CPU higher/lower than CPU’s of peers institutions? Is my CPU getting better/worse over time? Is the rate of change increasing/decreasing?

USING CPU AT THE TITLE LEVEL Answers the question - “I’m in a big deal with high overall CPU. If I drop out of the deal and subscribe to the most heavily used titles, will my cost per use go up or down?”

COMPARING 3 MODELS

USING CPU TO MAKE RENEW/CANCEL DECISIONS Based on the CPU data, we notified schools with CPU over $10 We said that a CPU of $ wasn’t necessarily a cause for alarm, but should probably be monitored We advised people to look pretty hard at anything over $20 CPU We stated that we considered CPU  To be the best single metric  To be a flawed metric  To be one factor (albeit one of the most influential) among many We included a list of 20 good reasons a school might stay in a high CPU deal

HIGH CPU RENEW/CANCEL RESULTS Our stats showed just 7 instances across all our deals up for renewal where the cost- per-use was over $20 for usage year In four of those cases, schools decided to stay with the deal. In three cases, schools cancelled. So, we had a 43% cancellation rate for big deals greater than $20 per download. The cancellation rate for schools paying less than $20 per download was 5%. CONCLUSIONS - CPU is a strong factor in the renew/cancel decision - CPU is not the sole factor in the renew/cancel decision

QUESTIONS? Tim Bucknall – UNCG, and Carolina Consortium   