WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.080 four to five minutes so that that should help a little bit 00:00:04.080 --> 00:00:09.920 just as i know everybody from this point forward we are being recorded 00:00:09.920 --> 00:00:17.920 there's mr Zenelis 00:00:26.320 --> 00:00:31.840 on your cue 00:00:42.840 --> 00:00:45.840 uh 00:00:48.399 --> 00:00:59.840 all right i have 9 30. why don't we fire it up let's broadcast 00:01:05.760 --> 00:01:09.280 all right so i believe we're streaming now and 00:01:09.280 --> 00:01:14.400 folks are coming in who registered i'm going to give that process a couple 00:01:14.400 --> 00:01:17.439 of maybe a minute or so to play out before we 00:01:17.439 --> 00:01:27.840 get going 00:01:35.920 --> 00:01:39.840 good morning everybody and happy friday by the way 00:01:39.840 --> 00:01:43.680 get settled in you brought your coffee i brought mine 00:01:43.680 --> 00:01:48.880 and this should be a really uh fun and interesting discussion 00:01:49.200 --> 00:01:53.119 so i think everybody's had about a minute or so to settle in 00:01:53.119 --> 00:01:57.759 jordan is all have the registrant's been let in 00:01:57.759 --> 00:02:02.719 yes sir fabulous all right everybody's with us so good 00:02:02.719 --> 00:02:07.040 morning everybody welcome and thanks for joining us this 00:02:07.040 --> 00:02:09.679 morning for the virginia sustainable scholarship 00:02:09.679 --> 00:02:13.360 virtual forum. I'm Brandon Butler, I'm the director of 00:02:13.360 --> 00:02:16.800 information policy at the University of Virginia library 00:02:16.800 --> 00:02:19.360 and I'll be moderating the discussion today. 00:02:19.360 --> 00:02:22.480 I'm going to start with a few technical notes and suggestions. 00:02:22.480 --> 00:02:28.000 One is I suggest using speaker view in zoom there's gonna be between you 00:02:28.000 --> 00:02:31.040 know eight and ten panelists at any one time but 00:02:31.040 --> 00:02:34.160 most of us will just be watching like you so it won't be fun to see us all at 00:02:34.160 --> 00:02:36.800 the same time so pick a speaker pick speaker view and 00:02:36.800 --> 00:02:40.640 you'll see what you need to see. Also closed captioning is available. 00:02:40.640 --> 00:02:45.440 I want to thank our captioner, Diana. You can choose closed 00:02:45.440 --> 00:02:48.959 captioning at the bottom uh of your zoom screen if you if that 00:02:48.959 --> 00:02:53.519 would be helpful to you also we are recording uh the video and a 00:02:53.519 --> 00:02:57.040 captioned video will be available online from our 00:02:57.040 --> 00:03:03.599 libraries after this event is over. So for the last several years 00:03:03.599 --> 00:03:07.840 I've been supporting this group of library leaders uh in this forum 00:03:07.840 --> 00:03:12.319 as they've worked toward this moment which is simultaneously coming I'd say 00:03:12.319 --> 00:03:15.120 about a year earlier than a lot of us thought 00:03:15.120 --> 00:03:18.640 but probably 20 years after people started noticing 00:03:18.640 --> 00:03:22.480 something was awry with our journal buying system 00:03:22.480 --> 00:03:25.680 right so we'll say a little more about that in a moment 00:03:25.680 --> 00:03:30.640 but first let me introduce everybody else you're seeing on your screen here. 00:03:30.640 --> 00:03:34.720 First we have Carrie Cooper. Carrie is the dean of university libraries at 00:03:34.720 --> 00:03:38.799 William and Mary. Bethany Nowviskie is the dean of libraries, 00:03:38.799 --> 00:03:42.959 senior academic technology officer, and professor of English at James Madison University. 00:03:42.959 --> 00:03:45.920 John Unsworth is the university 00:03:45.920 --> 00:03:49.599 librarian and dean of libraries at the University of Virginia. 00:03:49.599 --> 00:03:53.760 John Zenelis is dean of libraries and university librarian at George Mason University. 00:03:53.760 --> 00:03:56.959 Stuart Fraser is interim university 00:03:56.959 --> 00:04:00.640 librarian at Old Dominion University. 00:04:00.640 --> 00:04:03.599 Teresa Knott is interim dean of libraries and university librarian at Virginia Commonwealth University. 00:04:03.599 --> 00:04:08.319 Tyler Walters is dean of libraries at Virginia Tech. 00:04:08.319 --> 00:04:11.280 And I also want to acknowledge 00:04:11.280 --> 00:04:15.760 John Ulmschneider and George Fowler who led the VCU and ODU libraries 00:04:15.760 --> 00:04:18.880 respectively for the first several years of this group's work and helped lay the 00:04:18.880 --> 00:04:23.199 foundation for what we're what we're about to embark on. 00:04:23.199 --> 00:04:26.240 So I'm going to say a few words up front to help ground the conversation, 00:04:26.240 --> 00:04:30.800 what is this group, how did we get here, and what is the basic issue we're 00:04:30.800 --> 00:04:34.479 concerned about, then we'll move into answering some of the most popular 00:04:34.479 --> 00:04:38.560 questions we saw in your registration and then finally we'll try to reserve 00:04:38.560 --> 00:04:42.000 some time at the end to take questions you ask during the 00:04:42.000 --> 00:04:47.360 forum using the Q&A button in the zoom window. It's very likely, 00:04:47.360 --> 00:04:51.120 almost certain that we will not get to all of your questions but rest assured 00:04:51.120 --> 00:04:55.120 we will keep a record of them and we'll continue to use 00:04:55.120 --> 00:04:58.720 your input to inform the way we do outreach. 00:04:58.720 --> 00:05:02.320 Also if you're a researcher or any kind of constituent at any of our 00:05:02.320 --> 00:05:05.360 institutions we really welcome conversations with you 00:05:05.360 --> 00:05:08.960 about all these issues. After this event you can reach out to 00:05:08.960 --> 00:05:12.880 any of us or anyone at our libraries uh to set up a time to talk with 00:05:12.880 --> 00:05:18.000 somebody about this project. So a little background these seven 00:05:18.000 --> 00:05:21.919 libraries have been buying journal big deals together 00:05:21.919 --> 00:05:25.840 at least since 2001. Big deals packaged together 00:05:25.840 --> 00:05:29.919 all or substantially all of the journal offerings of a given vendor making them 00:05:29.919 --> 00:05:34.160 available for a single lump sum price. Since about the turn of 00:05:34.160 --> 00:05:38.320 the century these deals have consumed an increasing portion of library budgets 00:05:38.320 --> 00:05:42.880 including ours. Since 2016 when we all signed our last 00:05:42.880 --> 00:05:46.960 big deal with the vendor Elsevier we've been preparing for a paradigm 00:05:46.960 --> 00:05:51.360 shift in our approach to these deals the writing was on the wall back in 00:05:51.360 --> 00:05:55.039 2016. We simply could not meet our mission as 00:05:55.039 --> 00:05:59.280 libraries in the future if we continue to devote a large and 00:05:59.280 --> 00:06:03.280 growing portion of our budgets to just a few commercial vendors and 00:06:03.280 --> 00:06:07.280 their big journal deals. So we've started conversations across 00:06:07.280 --> 00:06:10.720 our campuses meeting with our presidents and provosts 00:06:10.720 --> 00:06:15.120 deans and department chairs researchers grad students and students 00:06:15.120 --> 00:06:18.880 to build understanding of this kind of broken system we're going to describe to 00:06:18.880 --> 00:06:21.600 you today and that we hope to start the change 00:06:21.600 --> 00:06:25.520 we've disclosed key information about our budgets including how much we spend 00:06:25.520 --> 00:06:29.120 on these big vendor deals and how quickly that number has grown 00:06:29.120 --> 00:06:32.880 over the years we've been building capacity in our 00:06:32.880 --> 00:06:36.639 libraries and collaboratively across them to support ways of accessing this 00:06:36.639 --> 00:06:40.080 literature without subscriptions we've gathered a 00:06:40.080 --> 00:06:44.000 massive data set from multiple sources to help inform our decisions you'll hear 00:06:44.000 --> 00:06:49.199 a lot more about all those things as the program unfolds our biggest deal 00:06:49.199 --> 00:06:52.720 by far is with the mega publisher Elsevier. 00:06:52.720 --> 00:06:56.240 Our current Elsevier contract runs through December 2021 00:06:56.240 --> 00:06:59.840 but due to the budget impacts of the covid crisis we've asked Elsevier to start 00:06:59.840 --> 00:07:03.440 working with us now on a new approach. We sent them a letter 00:07:03.440 --> 00:07:05.759 on Monday and we look forward to starting our 00:07:05.759 --> 00:07:10.639 conversations with them. Obviously we can't tell you our bargaining strategy 00:07:10.639 --> 00:07:15.520 in detail right but we can tell you that the status quo is unacceptable 00:07:15.520 --> 00:07:20.319 and we can share some of the values that inform us as we seek a new way forward. 00:07:20.319 --> 00:07:23.280 We can tell you a little more during this event about how we've prepared 00:07:23.280 --> 00:07:27.120 ourselves to make a better deal this time than we have in the past 00:07:27.120 --> 00:07:30.319 we're pretty sure our friends in Elsevier are watching this forum 00:07:30.319 --> 00:07:33.680 or they'll watch it later and we hope they'll take away from it that we're 00:07:33.680 --> 00:07:37.440 prepared and even kind of excited to talk to them 00:07:37.440 --> 00:07:40.639 about recalibrating a pricing model that we know you know 00:07:40.639 --> 00:07:45.520 renewing Elsevier recently compared to throwing a bowl of spaghetti at the wall. 00:07:45.520 --> 00:07:49.520 So finally before we get into questions I want to acknowledge some guests we've 00:07:49.520 --> 00:07:53.199 invited to join us. The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill 00:07:53.199 --> 00:07:56.560 broke up its Elsevier big deal earlier this year 00:07:56.560 --> 00:08:00.400 and one of the architects of their strategy Nerea Llamas is with us today 00:08:00.400 --> 00:08:03.680 thanks for joining us Nerea. 00:08:03.680 --> 00:08:06.879 And the Texas A&M university library is part of a massive new coalition 00:08:06.879 --> 00:08:11.520 of Texas libraries and institutions that's currently negotiating with Elsevier, 00:08:11.520 --> 00:08:14.160 and David Carlson the dean of university 00:08:14.160 --> 00:08:17.039 libraries at Texas A&M is with us today so thanks for joining 00:08:17.039 --> 00:08:19.840 us today David. i also want to acknowledge friends in 00:08:19.840 --> 00:08:23.599 the audience from Florida State University, the University 00:08:23.599 --> 00:08:27.919 of Missouri, University of Maryland, MIT, and the SUNY system all of whom have 00:08:27.919 --> 00:08:31.680 been down this road of reforming their approach to the big 00:08:31.680 --> 00:08:34.640 journal deals. to the friends and forebears in the 00:08:34.640 --> 00:08:39.200 audience we could add a hundred or more libraries universities and even entire 00:08:39.200 --> 00:08:41.839 countries around the world who've said enough is 00:08:41.839 --> 00:08:46.480 enough the old big deal model is broken they've made this path 00:08:46.480 --> 00:08:50.080 much easier for us to follow by walking it ahead of us. 00:08:50.080 --> 00:08:53.040 So now I'm going to ask the deans a series of questions based on the 00:08:53.040 --> 00:08:57.600 questions that you all submitted in your registrations and the first one 00:08:57.600 --> 00:09:01.519 is a big one. What are the values that are guiding our 00:09:01.519 --> 00:09:06.000 decisions about big deals and sustainability of scholarship in the 00:09:06.000 --> 00:09:09.920 future? and first I want to ask Carrie Cooper to 00:09:09.920 --> 00:09:12.959 start that answer. 00:09:13.839 --> 00:09:19.519 Thank you Brandon, equitable access is where i'd like to start it is 00:09:19.519 --> 00:09:23.680 it is consistent with the ethos of librarianship 00:09:23.680 --> 00:09:27.519 as public institutions it is our responsibility to make sure that the 00:09:27.519 --> 00:09:30.480 scholarship that's produced by our faculty and staff 00:09:30.480 --> 00:09:35.040 is accessible and that it can have the most impact 00:09:35.040 --> 00:09:38.080 access to knowledge improves and saves lives 00:09:38.080 --> 00:09:41.600 and pay walls are a barrier to that access 00:09:41.600 --> 00:09:45.839 and high pay walls are a barrier to that access 00:09:45.839 --> 00:09:52.399 one great example is the community's response to covid 19 in the spring when 00:09:52.399 --> 00:09:56.720 all of our students were sent home our libraries were locked up 00:09:56.720 --> 00:09:59.519 and we saw our research community come 00:09:59.519 --> 00:10:03.360 together and bring down those walls and it was quite 00:10:03.360 --> 00:10:06.079 remarkable and so we should learn from this crisis 00:10:06.079 --> 00:10:10.640 and make equitable access the norm 00:10:12.480 --> 00:10:16.560 thanks carrie and so uh john unsworth i want i wonder if you could say a little 00:10:16.560 --> 00:10:21.360 bit more about another value that's driving us here 00:10:24.399 --> 00:10:29.279 yep sorry just i'm muting myself the thing we all forget to do 00:10:29.279 --> 00:10:34.880 i want to begin by talking about diversity in our collections and in 00:10:34.880 --> 00:10:40.000 scholarly publication and i'd like to just briefly share a 00:10:40.000 --> 00:10:42.560 screen here 00:10:42.640 --> 00:10:47.839 to help illustrate a point 00:10:51.760 --> 00:10:57.519 so this is a blog post from 2012 by dan cohen my counterpart at 00:10:57.519 --> 00:11:00.399 northeastern illustrating what he later comes to call 00:11:00.399 --> 00:11:04.560 the wilkins profile this profile is a library specific graph that shows 00:11:04.560 --> 00:11:08.959 how many titles in the library's collection are held only by that library 00:11:08.959 --> 00:11:12.560 only by a few libraries by many libraries etc 00:11:12.560 --> 00:11:16.640 in this visualization a left-leaning library is one with many 00:11:16.640 --> 00:11:22.880 unique holdings some of you will be familiar with this idea of john wilkins 00:11:22.880 --> 00:11:26.880 or with dan cohen's post about it there are many nuances to the 00:11:26.880 --> 00:11:29.399 data but my point in presenting these 00:11:29.399 --> 00:11:35.200 visualizations is to say that in general faculty 00:11:35.200 --> 00:11:40.240 value uniqueness of course they want what everyone else has 00:11:40.240 --> 00:11:43.360 but what should distinguish their own library's collection is that it is 00:11:43.360 --> 00:11:46.959 uniquely attuned to their interests and indeed 00:11:46.959 --> 00:11:49.519 reflects the history of those interests over time 00:11:49.519 --> 00:11:53.600 as with special collections what draws researchers to one library 00:11:53.600 --> 00:11:57.600 rather than another will increasingly in an open access future be those things 00:11:57.600 --> 00:12:00.560 that are uniquely available in a particular collection 00:12:00.560 --> 00:12:07.760 unless you think that this is a notion only for the likes of harvard i 00:12:07.760 --> 00:12:12.800 want to present one other screen share just briefly 00:12:23.200 --> 00:12:27.920 so this is a slide from a presentation by the project manager for the eastern 00:12:27.920 --> 00:12:31.440 academic scholars trust a melon funded monograph retention 00:12:31.440 --> 00:12:34.639 consortium that i helped to set up when i was university librarian at brandeis 00:12:34.639 --> 00:12:36.959 and part of the boston library consortium 00:12:36.959 --> 00:12:39.760 the part of this slide that i want to draw your attention to is the line that 00:12:39.760 --> 00:12:43.120 says across this group of 47 small colleges 00:12:43.120 --> 00:12:45.839 and university libraries whose circulating monograph collections 00:12:45.839 --> 00:12:49.120 totaled altogether about 60 million volumes 00:12:49.120 --> 00:12:52.399 which was about the size of harvard's collection at the time 00:12:52.399 --> 00:12:56.000 fifty percent of title sets were held by only one library 00:12:56.000 --> 00:13:00.880 the title set here means any edition of a title any manifestation of moby dick 00:13:00.880 --> 00:13:03.600 in ferberg terms now i know that i'm talking about 00:13:03.600 --> 00:13:06.880 monographs and not journals here but i'm also talking about how collections take 00:13:06.880 --> 00:13:09.360 shape when they are developed by librarians in 00:13:09.360 --> 00:13:12.800 collaboration with faculty rather than designed by publishers 00:13:12.800 --> 00:13:16.399 also i'm a humanist and i'm librarian for the whole university so my library's 00:13:16.399 --> 00:13:19.519 collection practices have to serve the book people as well as 00:13:19.519 --> 00:13:22.399 the journal people and frankly journal prices have driven 00:13:22.399 --> 00:13:27.680 our monograph purchases to the margin i'm going to stop sharing 00:13:27.760 --> 00:13:31.120 which is to say journal publishers are dictating our monograph collecting 00:13:31.120 --> 00:13:34.000 practices now simply because what we've continued to agree to buy 00:13:34.000 --> 00:13:37.760 from them is so expensive we need to stop outsourcing our collection 00:13:37.760 --> 00:13:40.399 development we need to take our approval plans off 00:13:40.399 --> 00:13:43.760 autopilot we need to reconnect with our faculty and be sure that we're building 00:13:43.760 --> 00:13:46.880 the collections that they and their graduate students want and 00:13:46.880 --> 00:13:50.320 need faculty don't want their libraries to be mcdonald's 00:13:50.320 --> 00:13:53.600 drive-throughs where the menu is the same everywhere they want libraries that 00:13:53.600 --> 00:13:56.800 have unique holdings that reflect the intellectual heritage of the department 00:13:56.800 --> 00:14:00.079 centers institutes professional schools and colleges that make up that 00:14:00.079 --> 00:14:03.120 particular university how do we know that 00:14:03.120 --> 00:14:06.399 because even in small libraries like those of east who didn't plan together 00:14:06.399 --> 00:14:10.160 in any way until east it was clear that before the distorting influence of the 00:14:10.160 --> 00:14:13.199 big deal hit their library budgets their collection development 00:14:13.199 --> 00:14:17.760 had been surprisingly left leaning in john wilkins terms 00:14:17.760 --> 00:14:21.199 in the virginia context all of our campuses support diverse research 00:14:21.199 --> 00:14:24.320 interests odu has the state's first library school 00:14:24.320 --> 00:14:27.760 virginia tech has great depth on the bench in engineering william 00:14:27.760 --> 00:14:32.959 mary has oceanography vcu and uva have hospital and medical education programs 00:14:32.959 --> 00:14:36.959 jmu is becoming a phd granting institution george mason was recently 00:14:36.959 --> 00:14:40.320 ranked number one in cyber security talent and his tops in criminology as 00:14:40.320 --> 00:14:42.800 well these seven campuses don't have a single 00:14:42.800 --> 00:14:45.600 shared profile of faculty interest educational emphasis or 00:14:45.600 --> 00:14:49.519 research focus we do have a core set of journals that we all need 00:14:49.519 --> 00:14:53.279 but that's a few hundred titles much smaller than a bundle of thousands of 00:14:53.279 --> 00:14:58.160 journal titles to which we've been subscribing we're obliged to ensure that 00:14:58.160 --> 00:15:01.360 no single vendor or small group of vendors becomes entitled to so much of 00:15:01.360 --> 00:15:03.440 our budgets that we can effectively serve our 00:15:03.440 --> 00:15:07.600 campuses diverse and emerging needs new centers institutes and other innovative 00:15:07.600 --> 00:15:11.040 interdisciplinary initiatives need and should have access to the resources 00:15:11.040 --> 00:15:14.480 that power their work not only are our profiles different from one another 00:15:14.480 --> 00:15:17.680 they're different over time new majors and graduate programs arise 00:15:17.680 --> 00:15:20.720 every year and while some are variants on a theme already covered 00:15:20.720 --> 00:15:24.639 in our collecting practices some are genuinely new areas of interest 00:15:24.639 --> 00:15:27.839 and we need the flexibility to adjust our subscriptions to respond to and 00:15:27.839 --> 00:15:31.680 reflect these ongoing changes in our faculty's research and teaching 00:15:31.680 --> 00:15:34.800 in short we want the structure of our next deal to acknowledge and support our 00:15:34.800 --> 00:15:38.079 local collection development priorities and support our faculty when they 00:15:38.079 --> 00:15:42.240 explore new areas rather than having our collections selected and bulk priced by 00:15:42.240 --> 00:15:45.040 our vendors supporting small publishers is also a 00:15:45.040 --> 00:15:47.360 specific goal of the larger viva consortium 00:15:47.360 --> 00:15:50.399 which i have the honor to serve as chair of the steering committee this year 00:15:50.399 --> 00:15:54.000 small publishers of all sorts provide an opportunity for new voices and special 00:15:54.000 --> 00:15:58.000 expertise and they are often society publishers about which i'll have more to 00:15:58.000 --> 00:16:01.120 say later thank you 00:16:02.399 --> 00:16:08.000 thanks sean and so finally uh last but very far from least bethany i wonder if 00:16:08.000 --> 00:16:11.199 you would add a third value to the list of things that 00:16:11.199 --> 00:16:15.920 we have on our minds as we make this transition sure i'd be happy to brandon 00:16:15.920 --> 00:16:20.160 good morning everybody so um another of our guiding principles 00:16:20.160 --> 00:16:24.000 is that costs associated with access to our 00:16:24.000 --> 00:16:29.759 own collective scholarly work should be and i will use a very mild word here 00:16:29.759 --> 00:16:35.519 these costs should simply be reasonable and one consequence of having allowed a 00:16:35.519 --> 00:16:39.680 monopolistic system to develop around commercially licensed journal bundles 00:16:39.680 --> 00:16:44.320 is that the dollar values that our vendors are assigning to these bundles 00:16:44.320 --> 00:16:50.800 have truly lost touch with reality not only has price inflation radically 00:16:50.800 --> 00:16:55.360 outstripped our own annual budget increases in libraries for 00:16:55.360 --> 00:16:59.199 decades the price of the bundles no longer has 00:16:59.199 --> 00:17:04.799 any real relationship to the vendor's actual cost to produce 00:17:04.799 --> 00:17:08.880 these digital journals nor does it correspond to any fundamental 00:17:08.880 --> 00:17:14.880 extra value that the vendor itself adds to the work of our faculty who produce 00:17:14.880 --> 00:17:19.839 this scholarship the value of scholarly journals comes 00:17:19.839 --> 00:17:24.480 almost entirely from the labor provided by authors and researchers 00:17:24.480 --> 00:17:28.720 themselves and then by volunteer faculty peer 00:17:28.720 --> 00:17:31.280 reviewers and editors who offer their time 00:17:31.280 --> 00:17:36.080 and their work to the system too and um and that's a little hard to take when 00:17:36.080 --> 00:17:41.120 you learn about the truly intolerable profit margins that private 00:17:41.120 --> 00:17:45.919 companies are extracting for their shareholders from our cash 00:17:45.919 --> 00:17:49.919 strapped public institutions so these are 00:17:49.919 --> 00:17:55.520 30 to 40 percent profit margins for top vendors and that dwarfs what investors 00:17:55.520 --> 00:17:59.600 make from companies like apple or google and the vendors that we're 00:17:59.600 --> 00:18:03.520 talking about today have absolute revenues in the billions 00:18:03.520 --> 00:18:06.880 of dollars they've got profits that exceed the 00:18:06.880 --> 00:18:11.520 annual budgets of major research funders like the howard hughes medical institute 00:18:11.520 --> 00:18:17.280 or the welcome trust bundled big deals are um 00:18:17.280 --> 00:18:21.200 they're they're just not good deals too so it's like with cable tv where you 00:18:21.200 --> 00:18:25.280 might only want to watch a couple of channels but comcast makes you subscribe 00:18:25.280 --> 00:18:30.960 to 150 of them librarians know how to how to crunch our 00:18:30.960 --> 00:18:34.400 own data and our data shows that these big 00:18:34.400 --> 00:18:36.799 bundles are chock full of titles that our 00:18:36.799 --> 00:18:40.720 researchers never ever use so i'm not talking about journal 00:18:40.720 --> 00:18:44.400 issues mind you i'm talking about whole whole titles whole journal titles that 00:18:44.400 --> 00:18:46.720 we have to pay for and that nobody on campus 00:18:46.720 --> 00:18:53.280 actually really wants the um the value of these bundles is also in 00:18:53.280 --> 00:18:56.960 decline due to the growth in open access that is 00:18:56.960 --> 00:19:00.799 the free and legal sharing of scholarly preprints and so forth 00:19:00.799 --> 00:19:04.720 more and more of what we are paying for is available for free 00:19:04.720 --> 00:19:09.120 outside the paywall and we've got really good systems for helping scholars to 00:19:09.120 --> 00:19:12.080 locate those versions and for resource sharing across 00:19:12.080 --> 00:19:18.880 institutions so you know overall elsevier and similar companies um 00:19:18.880 --> 00:19:22.240 they do see the writing on the wall they know that this model 00:19:22.240 --> 00:19:26.880 is coming to an end and therefore they're also putting us in a position to 00:19:26.880 --> 00:19:31.039 have to reject some double dipping that they're doing 00:19:31.039 --> 00:19:35.039 that is when faculty authors pay fees 00:19:35.039 --> 00:19:39.360 to have the work that they place in subscription journals made 00:19:39.360 --> 00:19:43.840 open access our prices for that same journal can't continue 00:19:43.840 --> 00:19:48.880 to go up that's just simply not fair our our colleagues in the uk have 00:19:48.880 --> 00:19:52.320 recently issued a public statement calling for a 25 00:19:52.320 --> 00:19:55.679 price reduction on big deals explaining that this is a 00:19:55.679 --> 00:19:59.919 long overdue recalibration and that demand 00:19:59.919 --> 00:20:05.039 or a little better plus um an effort to make sure that we're really wanting what 00:20:05.039 --> 00:20:10.000 we're paying for all that sounds about right to us 00:20:11.360 --> 00:20:15.120 great thanks a lot thanks a lot bethany and so 00:20:15.120 --> 00:20:18.880 the next thing a question that came through was about 00:20:18.880 --> 00:20:23.919 how we decide which journals are valuable and if we have to make cuts 00:20:23.919 --> 00:20:28.400 or make a custom bundle how will we decide what to keep and what to cut 00:20:28.400 --> 00:20:32.159 and i wonder uh tyler walters from virginia tech if you could answer say a 00:20:32.159 --> 00:20:35.840 little bit about that question 00:20:37.760 --> 00:20:42.559 yeah thanks brandon i can definitely reply to that 00:20:43.600 --> 00:20:46.880 so first i'd just like to say that the data that we're working with the data 00:20:46.880 --> 00:20:50.000 that we have now in 2020 is just so much more rich and 00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:53.840 informative than the data we were working with in 2016 when we signed our 00:20:53.840 --> 00:20:58.880 current deal for the freedom collection we have data sources from products and 00:20:58.880 --> 00:21:03.440 services like one figure unsub counter 5 reports 00:21:03.440 --> 00:21:07.200 and green glass and other other resources as well 00:21:07.200 --> 00:21:10.559 so when we think about what is a subscription just to ask that basic 00:21:10.559 --> 00:21:13.600 question we know that there's really this is well 00:21:13.600 --> 00:21:17.200 it's very familiar to us all but it's really just one way of 00:21:17.200 --> 00:21:21.919 providing access and for low use titles to pay as much as we are to have 00:21:21.919 --> 00:21:26.320 something ready online available to get at any time when it's 00:21:26.320 --> 00:21:30.320 barely if never used is just an extremely expensive way to go 00:21:30.320 --> 00:21:34.720 about doing it so how do we know a journal is worth our 00:21:34.720 --> 00:21:37.679 while of course we look at article downloads 00:21:37.679 --> 00:21:41.840 and the numbers or amount of downloads we all know that but what does 00:21:41.840 --> 00:21:45.120 that really tell us it tells us somebody downloaded an 00:21:45.120 --> 00:21:47.919 article but we don't know really what anybody's doing 00:21:47.919 --> 00:21:52.000 with the articles with that so we do look at other factors 00:21:52.000 --> 00:21:56.559 such as uh citation rates for articles in a given journal and we put a lot of 00:21:56.559 --> 00:21:59.520 weight on that that's telling us that there are scholars out there that 00:21:59.520 --> 00:22:04.640 are using those works in their own work we also look uh 00:22:04.640 --> 00:22:08.240 quite a bit at our own researchers and where they publish where where are the 00:22:08.240 --> 00:22:11.360 venues of the journal venues that they uh really 00:22:11.360 --> 00:22:17.120 enjoy and see are important to their own work back on downloads for a moment you 00:22:17.120 --> 00:22:20.000 know we do look at things in a more finely grained way now 00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:23.120 as well we look at you know our downloads from recent issues are they 00:22:23.120 --> 00:22:25.840 from older back file packages that might 00:22:25.840 --> 00:22:30.159 inform how we provide access to to the current literature 00:22:30.159 --> 00:22:33.360 another factor we work with our faculty on is is to 00:22:33.360 --> 00:22:36.799 understand uh the preponderance of instant access 00:22:36.799 --> 00:22:41.280 that's needed from a given journal or can people wait a day and that too might 00:22:41.280 --> 00:22:44.240 tell us something about how we provide access to it 00:22:44.240 --> 00:22:47.760 and another panelist is going to talk more about these modes of access so 00:22:47.760 --> 00:22:51.120 we'll get into that a little bit a little bit later 00:22:51.120 --> 00:22:54.240 um but i do want to reiterate what bethany said 00:22:54.240 --> 00:22:58.080 is that you know the data is absolutely telling us 100 00:22:58.080 --> 00:23:01.520 that we have hundreds of journals that are 00:23:01.520 --> 00:23:07.520 not read or barely read to give you a quick data point from virginia tech 00:23:07.520 --> 00:23:11.280 out of this freedom collection package there are about 40 00:23:11.280 --> 00:23:16.880 percent of the journal titles get 50 downloads per year so that means on 00:23:16.880 --> 00:23:21.360 average there's there's 40 percent of these journals get a download per week 00:23:21.360 --> 00:23:25.679 from our entire university community that's all the students all the faculty 00:23:25.679 --> 00:23:30.080 all the staff so that is barely being used and we just don't want to pay 00:23:30.080 --> 00:23:33.679 this rate for it anymore i should mention too that there's 00:23:33.679 --> 00:23:38.640 a lot of qualitative input on this of course we do talk with faculty who are 00:23:38.640 --> 00:23:42.720 interested and willing to work with us on understanding uh journal publishing 00:23:42.720 --> 00:23:45.600 journal the literature in their fields and uh 00:23:45.600 --> 00:23:51.520 which which titles they really are covet and are important to them uh so 00:23:51.520 --> 00:23:54.159 maybe let me go back to the very beginning of the question for just a 00:23:54.159 --> 00:23:55.919 moment because the question was how are we going to 00:23:55.919 --> 00:23:58.159 pick titles and i know people want to know 00:23:58.159 --> 00:24:01.360 how many titles do we think we're going to end up with and and 00:24:01.360 --> 00:24:05.200 i i just honestly can't answer that because we just don't really know how 00:24:05.200 --> 00:24:07.840 many titles in the end we're going to have 00:24:07.840 --> 00:24:11.360 but i would say you know the work that we've done here is 00:24:11.360 --> 00:24:15.760 we think we can provide about three quarters of our usage online for a 00:24:15.760 --> 00:24:20.960 a far smaller cost and we feel confident i think as a consortium as a partnership 00:24:20.960 --> 00:24:24.240 here that that we can do that we can prove we can still provide 00:24:24.240 --> 00:24:32.559 a good bid a majority of online access for a much smaller cost great thanks 00:24:32.559 --> 00:24:35.440 tyler and that leads very directly to our next 00:24:35.440 --> 00:24:39.520 question which is uh if it turns out that negotiations uh 00:24:39.520 --> 00:24:43.200 play out uh in such a way that some titles are no 00:24:43.200 --> 00:24:45.760 longer part of our subscription bundle for any 00:24:45.760 --> 00:24:49.200 particular deal what are some of the ways that folks can 00:24:49.200 --> 00:24:52.559 access content after a subscription is canceled and i 00:24:52.559 --> 00:24:57.440 want to ask stuart fraser to say a little bit about that thanks 00:24:57.440 --> 00:25:00.960 brandon um i think one of the really important 00:25:00.960 --> 00:25:04.880 takeaways um i hope people uh get from the forum 00:25:04.880 --> 00:25:09.760 today is that uh subscriptions are 00:25:09.760 --> 00:25:14.559 now as tyler uh touched upon uh only one of several 00:25:14.559 --> 00:25:20.720 uh lawful means to access scholarly materials 00:25:20.720 --> 00:25:28.320 scholarly content from elsevier and from others we are committed uh 00:25:28.320 --> 00:25:31.520 as a group and each of our individual libraries 00:25:31.520 --> 00:25:38.320 to continuing to meet the research needs of uh faculty 00:25:38.320 --> 00:25:45.120 uh and students at our institutions using a more flexible array 00:25:45.120 --> 00:25:51.840 of methods and we believe strongly 00:25:51.840 --> 00:26:00.000 through that process we will achieve more cost-effective operations 00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:06.159 so among these methods of access for one thing 00:26:06.159 --> 00:26:13.760 many of the contracts that we have um engaged in with uh vendors 00:26:13.760 --> 00:26:17.360 of uh scholarly content like elsevier include perpetual 00:26:17.360 --> 00:26:24.080 access and so what that means is that uh content uh that we purchased online 00:26:24.080 --> 00:26:30.960 access to um is and will remain accessible to us uh even 00:26:30.960 --> 00:26:37.279 after our existing contract expires uh so in a lot of those cases what would 00:26:37.279 --> 00:26:42.080 be affected by a a 00:26:42.080 --> 00:26:49.760 loss of subscription access would be access to new materials it would not 00:26:49.760 --> 00:26:54.880 necessarily have an impact on access to um 00:26:54.880 --> 00:26:59.200 to back file to older materials and that varies from contract to contract so in 00:26:59.200 --> 00:27:04.640 each case there would be some variation but in many cases there would be 00:27:04.640 --> 00:27:08.640 perpetual access to uh material that we 00:27:08.640 --> 00:27:14.640 licensed purchased in the past the second means of access which i know 00:27:14.640 --> 00:27:18.880 many of the faculty who may be attending and 00:27:18.880 --> 00:27:22.320 others are well familiar with is interlibrary loan 00:27:22.320 --> 00:27:25.679 basically interlibrary loan is a resource a long-standing resource 00:27:25.679 --> 00:27:30.080 sharing process with very mature partnerships um 00:27:30.080 --> 00:27:36.960 and uh and a increasingly innovative and robust backbone that 00:27:36.960 --> 00:27:39.360 allows libraries to share material with one 00:27:39.360 --> 00:27:43.520 another and it was created really to meet the 00:27:43.520 --> 00:27:49.200 needs of libraries to have access 00:27:49.200 --> 00:27:55.279 uh to um our scholarship that is published in journals that are 00:27:55.279 --> 00:28:00.159 not widely um needed at their institution 00:28:00.159 --> 00:28:04.960 but are occasionally needed so basically uh resource sharing through interlibrary 00:28:04.960 --> 00:28:10.080 loan was designed as a way uh for libraries to share 00:28:10.080 --> 00:28:15.679 uh those libraries with subscriptions to uh journals that are essential to 00:28:15.679 --> 00:28:18.799 programs that they're offering can share with other libraries 00:28:18.799 --> 00:28:22.640 that may not have programs that would require demand 00:28:22.640 --> 00:28:27.039 lead to them subscribing to those journals 00:28:27.039 --> 00:28:34.240 viva and our libraries in vrl um are implementing a variety of 00:28:34.240 --> 00:28:39.600 expedited interlibrary loan processes rapid ill is 00:28:39.600 --> 00:28:44.080 an example of one that viva is working on a group uh 00:28:44.080 --> 00:28:50.799 license for and uh these have sped up the uh turnaround time on interlibrary 00:28:50.799 --> 00:28:55.919 loan uh significantly in many cases now interla library loan 00:28:55.919 --> 00:29:02.720 uh systems allow for a turnaround time of under 24 hours um and so 00:29:02.720 --> 00:29:09.279 that is another important um uh lawful way to acquire content 00:29:09.279 --> 00:29:14.320 um in the event that subscriptions uh are no longer in place and then the 00:29:14.320 --> 00:29:18.640 final piece of this puzzle uh they're actually to jump 00:29:18.640 --> 00:29:21.600 the head a little bit the next piece is open access 00:29:21.600 --> 00:29:26.960 and um these are the platforms that uh many of the institutions i think all of 00:29:26.960 --> 00:29:30.799 the vrl institutions have them and viva is also looking at some things across 00:29:30.799 --> 00:29:35.279 the board for all the institutions uh in virginia 00:29:35.279 --> 00:29:41.600 uh repositories are locations where uh either 00:29:41.600 --> 00:29:46.799 uh working papers pre pre-print versions or if the publisher allows 00:29:46.799 --> 00:29:51.919 final versions um of uh scholarly content can be hosted 00:29:51.919 --> 00:29:59.840 and made accessible um at no charge uh to uh uh usually 00:29:59.840 --> 00:30:06.000 without restriction so uh that is a third means and then the final 00:30:06.000 --> 00:30:09.760 means uh is what 00:30:09.760 --> 00:30:13.679 amounts to pay-per-view or on-demand purchasing 00:30:13.679 --> 00:30:17.279 directly from publishers or through third-party vendors that work with 00:30:17.279 --> 00:30:21.679 publishers and to purchase scholarship uh journal 00:30:21.679 --> 00:30:25.440 articles for example at the article level so in the absence 00:30:25.440 --> 00:30:30.320 of a subscription uh we still would be uh 00:30:30.320 --> 00:30:35.840 able and committed to if needed purchasing directly at the 00:30:35.840 --> 00:30:38.880 article level from the publisher or one of these third 00:30:38.880 --> 00:30:42.159 parties which includes uh the most notable example reprints 00:30:42.159 --> 00:30:45.600 desk is one and uh copyright clearance centers get 00:30:45.600 --> 00:30:49.520 it now service is another those are platforms through which you 00:30:49.520 --> 00:30:53.919 can purchase articles with the copyright clearances already 00:30:53.919 --> 00:30:57.440 included in the purchase cost and then deliver 00:30:57.440 --> 00:31:01.200 those articles directly into the hands of researchers so 00:31:01.200 --> 00:31:04.480 in sum it's important to understand once again that 00:31:04.480 --> 00:31:09.840 uh uh subscriptions are only one of many uh ways that we can now provide 00:31:09.840 --> 00:31:14.720 scholarly content quickly and efficiently to researchers 00:31:14.720 --> 00:31:19.279 um and that we're all collectively and individually committed 00:31:19.279 --> 00:31:25.840 uh to doing that at uh the highest possible level 00:31:27.840 --> 00:31:31.279 excellent thanks so much stuart um yeah i think this is one of the most 00:31:31.279 --> 00:31:34.880 important points that we try to make when we talk about 00:31:34.880 --> 00:31:39.679 these issues you know that the changes that we're looking at are 00:31:39.679 --> 00:31:43.679 not changes that take access away they're changes that make access 00:31:43.679 --> 00:31:47.679 available through different channels and sometimes that changes who you go to 00:31:47.679 --> 00:31:51.120 for access or you know it adds a little bit of time 00:31:51.120 --> 00:31:53.200 but but there's no world where things 00:31:53.200 --> 00:31:55.519 disappear forever we're committed to making 00:31:55.519 --> 00:31:58.559 resources available to the folks that need them so 00:31:58.559 --> 00:32:05.519 my next question is for bethany and it is how does this effort by this group 00:32:05.519 --> 00:32:10.000 of libraries relate to uh relate to the incentive 00:32:10.000 --> 00:32:12.840 structures created by promotion and tenure 00:32:12.840 --> 00:32:16.480 policies how does our effort to change the landscape 00:32:16.480 --> 00:32:22.880 how are we impacted by those policies yeah okay well the first thing to say 00:32:22.880 --> 00:32:27.039 here is that this is a highly complex 00:32:27.039 --> 00:32:30.640 ecosystem in which we are all intertwingled 00:32:30.640 --> 00:32:34.720 and the the push for change that you hear coming from your 00:32:34.720 --> 00:32:38.080 your university libraries um is just one part 00:32:38.080 --> 00:32:42.240 of what is needed and that's really why we're talking with you today with 00:32:42.240 --> 00:32:47.360 with our faculty we're doing what we can along with our library colleagues around 00:32:47.360 --> 00:32:51.760 the world and that includes uh sharing our 00:32:51.760 --> 00:32:55.279 knowledge about why these models are unsustainable 00:32:55.279 --> 00:32:58.799 for us all in libraries we are trying our hardest 00:32:58.799 --> 00:33:03.919 to limit our investments in broken models and we are 00:33:03.919 --> 00:33:08.240 investing in what we see as viable sustainable 00:33:08.240 --> 00:33:12.799 alternatives um and those include institutional repositories they include 00:33:12.799 --> 00:33:16.480 pre-print platforms other open infrastructures and 00:33:16.480 --> 00:33:20.960 aligned services that are designed by scholars 00:33:20.960 --> 00:33:25.279 for scholars so so that's important to say first 00:33:25.279 --> 00:33:28.960 but but we need your help because that only gets us 00:33:28.960 --> 00:33:32.880 so far so without reform to the entire system 00:33:32.880 --> 00:33:36.880 research is going to continue to flow behind pay walls 00:33:36.880 --> 00:33:43.679 or into oa journals that have sky-high article processing fees and that 00:33:43.679 --> 00:33:46.799 reform that is needed really has its roots in what 00:33:46.799 --> 00:33:50.960 you all as scholars and researchers value 00:33:50.960 --> 00:33:56.080 in where you choose to push where you place your energies and your gifts 00:33:56.080 --> 00:34:00.320 and where you put the products of your labor it's it's about how you shape the 00:34:00.320 --> 00:34:05.519 future of your own disciplines and of course one tool for doing that is 00:34:05.519 --> 00:34:10.720 addressing through your professional associations and locally at the academic 00:34:10.720 --> 00:34:17.200 department level the expression of your discipline's values that takes 00:34:17.200 --> 00:34:21.040 the form of promotion and tenure guidelines 00:34:21.040 --> 00:34:25.119 that is what you're telling the next generation of scholars in your field 00:34:25.119 --> 00:34:29.440 fundamentally matters and where you tell them that you want to see their work 00:34:29.440 --> 00:34:34.079 appear so the most important consideration 00:34:34.079 --> 00:34:40.240 and reform i might suggest is to look at removing journal-based metrics 00:34:40.240 --> 00:34:44.639 from research evaluation and that's not just good for 00:34:44.639 --> 00:34:48.480 promoting a more sustainable economy around scholarly 00:34:48.480 --> 00:34:52.079 communication i think it's good for scholarship itself 00:34:52.079 --> 00:34:56.560 and this really came home to me earlier in my career i was sort of 00:34:56.560 --> 00:34:59.440 making a tour of australian universities that were 00:34:59.440 --> 00:35:02.400 doing interesting work in the digital humanities and they were 00:35:02.400 --> 00:35:07.119 wanting to create a new professional association and a new interdisciplinary 00:35:07.119 --> 00:35:10.800 open access journal so that they could network and broaden 00:35:10.800 --> 00:35:14.560 and build a really interdisciplinary field 00:35:14.560 --> 00:35:18.800 but a kind of a research assessment exercise had just been instituted there 00:35:18.800 --> 00:35:23.040 at the national level in which journals had assigned impact 00:35:23.040 --> 00:35:26.000 factors to them so they had numerical scores 00:35:26.000 --> 00:35:29.200 and everybody there in the middle of all of this 00:35:29.200 --> 00:35:33.359 intellectual foment was also kind of fundamentally down-hearted 00:35:33.359 --> 00:35:36.720 because how could you create a new journal how could you create a new field 00:35:36.720 --> 00:35:40.720 when it would come into the picture with an impact factor of zero and the 00:35:40.720 --> 00:35:43.599 feeling was that all the scholarly creativity and 00:35:43.599 --> 00:35:46.880 interchange across the humanities and engineering and social science and 00:35:46.880 --> 00:35:50.720 everything else was about to hit the brick wall of an 00:35:50.720 --> 00:35:54.000 ossified set of top journals that were really not 00:35:54.000 --> 00:35:58.640 welcoming of the new so anyway so on on reconsidering 00:35:58.640 --> 00:36:03.280 journal-based metrics um models and principles already exist you don't have 00:36:03.280 --> 00:36:05.520 to reinvent the wheel here so i would 00:36:05.520 --> 00:36:08.720 suggest looking at things like the leiden manifesto 00:36:08.720 --> 00:36:11.760 or sf dora the san francisco declaration on 00:36:11.760 --> 00:36:14.960 research assessment but my big takeaway here 00:36:14.960 --> 00:36:19.040 is that the the system can't change our research fields our scholarly 00:36:19.040 --> 00:36:24.960 disciplines will be slower to evolve to advance to open themselves up to 00:36:24.960 --> 00:36:27.599 completely new ideas and scholarly insights 00:36:27.599 --> 00:36:32.640 as long as a few journal titles notably the titles that are least accessible to 00:36:32.640 --> 00:36:35.839 broad publics and to less well-funded institutions 00:36:35.839 --> 00:36:39.520 as long as those are the ones that hold the keys for faculty to 00:36:39.520 --> 00:36:46.400 career success and all the power to address that lies in the hands 00:36:46.400 --> 00:36:49.760 of our faculty and we want to be partnering with 00:36:49.760 --> 00:36:56.480 and serving you and enabling you to realize um your own 00:36:56.480 --> 00:36:59.359 power for change 00:37:00.640 --> 00:37:03.920 thank you bethany wow a powerful story um 00:37:03.920 --> 00:37:08.800 and so that's a great story about how you know libraries are enmeshed in a 00:37:08.800 --> 00:37:12.079 system that that can change the way we have to 00:37:12.079 --> 00:37:14.640 operate but of course when libraries change the 00:37:14.640 --> 00:37:19.599 way we operate uh that'll have ripple effects 00:37:19.680 --> 00:37:23.760 among the rest of the ecosystem and so john unsworth i wanted to ask you 00:37:23.760 --> 00:37:26.880 you know what do we anticipate could be the 00:37:26.880 --> 00:37:31.839 impact of our uh sort of move toward a more sustainable model 00:37:31.839 --> 00:37:36.960 on maybe smaller publishers scholars scholarly society journals and so on 00:37:36.960 --> 00:37:43.839 are we going to endanger those folks by rethinking our approach to big deal 00:37:43.839 --> 00:37:48.960 bundles it's a very reasonable question we know 00:37:48.960 --> 00:37:52.640 that some scholarly societies rely on subscription revenue from big deal 00:37:52.640 --> 00:37:55.599 partners unfortunately we also know that in the 00:37:55.599 --> 00:37:59.200 past big deals have forced us to cancel subscriptions to some independent 00:37:59.200 --> 00:38:02.320 society journals ironically driving some of those 00:38:02.320 --> 00:38:07.119 societies into the arms of big deal publishers so as libraries rethink our 00:38:07.119 --> 00:38:10.480 commitments to big deals we can begin to reverse this process 00:38:10.480 --> 00:38:14.000 dedicating more resources to sustaining independent publications that are 00:38:14.000 --> 00:38:17.599 scholar-led and that support the research community 00:38:17.599 --> 00:38:21.839 rather than supporting a commercial entity 00:38:24.400 --> 00:38:27.760 the open scholarship community which includes libraries and research funders 00:38:27.760 --> 00:38:31.520 is creating support systems for journal editors societies etc who 00:38:31.520 --> 00:38:35.599 want to pivot to more sustainable models several of the libraries in this 00:38:35.599 --> 00:38:39.520 virginia research libraries group and many others across the country 00:38:39.520 --> 00:38:42.960 provide publishing services that can help bring journals to the public at a 00:38:42.960 --> 00:38:46.560 fraction of the cost associated with commercial publishers and if you haven't 00:38:46.560 --> 00:38:50.079 looked at it i recommend the library publishing 00:38:50.079 --> 00:38:53.359 coalitions directory at librarypublishing.org 00:38:53.359 --> 00:38:57.040 if you're a journal editor or an officer in a society talk to your library 00:38:57.040 --> 00:39:00.800 about how you can partner to advance some important shared goals 00:39:00.800 --> 00:39:03.680 we really do want to help you with infrastructure they can support a peer 00:39:03.680 --> 00:39:06.320 review process and allow you to publish in multiple 00:39:06.320 --> 00:39:09.760 formats with clear rights statements that preserve intellectual property 00:39:09.760 --> 00:39:14.640 while promoting new research if you publish open access your work is 00:39:14.640 --> 00:39:17.200 20 more likely to be cited of course if you 00:39:17.200 --> 00:39:19.119 publish something stupid that will get 20 00:39:19.119 --> 00:39:24.320 more attention as well i do want to say a word to small scholarly publishers in 00:39:24.320 --> 00:39:28.960 particular though based on my experience with two pretty small scholarly 00:39:28.960 --> 00:39:32.000 publishing enterprises the first is the text encoding 00:39:32.000 --> 00:39:35.680 initiative this is a tremendously important multi-disciplinary 00:39:35.680 --> 00:39:39.200 international and by now multi-generational effort to develop a 00:39:39.200 --> 00:39:42.000 detailed and actionable ontology of literary 00:39:42.000 --> 00:39:45.280 and linguistic texts its core publications is a set of 00:39:45.280 --> 00:39:51.599 guidelines for text encoding now in xml the tei has existed since the late 1980s 00:39:51.599 --> 00:39:55.520 and when i incorporated incorporated it as a non-profit membership organization 00:39:55.520 --> 00:39:57.920 in 2000 it was a very important question whether 00:39:57.920 --> 00:40:01.520 or not to charge for access to the tei guidelines 00:40:01.520 --> 00:40:04.960 we chose to do so only for print and then at cost and in partnership with the 00:40:04.960 --> 00:40:08.880 university of virginia press the result was a broader adoption of the 00:40:08.880 --> 00:40:12.000 standard growth in the community of research users and contributors 00:40:12.000 --> 00:40:15.280 greater internationalization and more multilingualism 00:40:15.280 --> 00:40:18.880 open access peer-reviewed journals published with support from the tei 00:40:18.880 --> 00:40:22.000 training materials just now redeveloped and re-released 00:40:22.000 --> 00:40:25.680 in short a vibrant intellectual community that is not dependent on 00:40:25.680 --> 00:40:28.960 journal income my second example though is a more 00:40:28.960 --> 00:40:33.280 traditional scholarly society that was when i joined it entirely dependent on 00:40:33.280 --> 00:40:37.280 journal income or more accurately indentured to their commercial publisher 00:40:37.280 --> 00:40:41.200 such that we collected subscription income from members of the society and 00:40:41.200 --> 00:40:44.400 then passed it along to them keeping about 10 percent for the 00:40:44.400 --> 00:40:48.079 operation of the society i ditched that deal and worked with 00:40:48.079 --> 00:40:51.119 harold short and then ray siemens to lay the foundation 00:40:51.119 --> 00:40:54.480 of what became the alliance of digital humanities organizations 00:40:54.480 --> 00:40:58.319 which also has a publishing deal at its heart and it's a much better deal with 00:40:58.319 --> 00:41:00.880 an academic publisher albeit a large and commercially 00:41:00.880 --> 00:41:04.960 successful one where they share income appropriately with the society 00:41:04.960 --> 00:41:08.960 that creates the value for which institutions and individuals subscribe 00:41:08.960 --> 00:41:12.560 that income has allowed at ho to support the open access digital humanities 00:41:12.560 --> 00:41:15.599 quarterly as well as funding generous bursaries for graduate students 00:41:15.599 --> 00:41:19.520 presenting at the annual conference and largely thanks to harold short's 00:41:19.520 --> 00:41:22.560 brilliance at sharing we've been able to use the income to add 00:41:22.560 --> 00:41:26.240 hoe as a platform for expanding the organization to new countries and new 00:41:26.240 --> 00:41:30.160 research communities so what was once a bilateral u.s 00:41:30.160 --> 00:41:33.280 organization partnered with an eu organization 00:41:33.280 --> 00:41:36.319 has become a network of scholarly societies not only in those areas but 00:41:36.319 --> 00:41:39.920 also in mexico taiwan japan south africa australasia 00:41:39.920 --> 00:41:43.040 and francophone countries with more constituent organizations under 00:41:43.040 --> 00:41:47.280 consideration for membership each year my message my message to small 00:41:47.280 --> 00:41:50.800 publishers is this value sharing and collaboration over 00:41:50.800 --> 00:41:54.800 outsourced services and opaque accounting own the thing you produce and 00:41:54.800 --> 00:41:58.480 then figure out how in your particular situation you can best sustain and share 00:41:58.480 --> 00:42:01.280 that value through some combination of things that 00:42:01.280 --> 00:42:04.960 people or institutions pay for and things that are free don't assume 00:42:04.960 --> 00:42:07.760 that your most valuable asset should be the one people pay for 00:42:07.760 --> 00:42:11.359 also think about how giving away your thing of value might attract the 00:42:11.359 --> 00:42:15.359 contribution of talent and ideas helping to create a sustainable 00:42:15.359 --> 00:42:19.520 scholarly community thank you 00:42:20.480 --> 00:42:23.520 thank you john again great great stories um 00:42:23.520 --> 00:42:26.720 and really making this stuff real for folks um 00:42:26.720 --> 00:42:31.599 so speaking of things that are real i want to get to the moment that we're 00:42:31.599 --> 00:42:36.560 in right now we are being uh frankly forced to act 00:42:36.560 --> 00:42:40.960 with some urgency now by the budget crisis 00:42:40.960 --> 00:42:44.880 that's resulting from the covet 19 pandemic 00:42:44.880 --> 00:42:48.640 and a lot of folks were wondering you know how exactly does 00:42:48.640 --> 00:42:52.480 what we're doing now relate to the covid crisis 00:42:52.480 --> 00:42:57.040 and what you know well is this is what we're doing now sort of a 00:42:57.040 --> 00:43:00.560 temporary thing that's a reaction to the budget crisis 00:43:00.560 --> 00:43:04.480 or is it going to have longer-term effects on the way we operate 00:43:04.480 --> 00:43:08.079 and i wanted to ask john zanelis from george mason university to talk a little 00:43:08.079 --> 00:43:12.800 bit about how covid relates to what we're doing thank you 00:43:12.800 --> 00:43:17.359 braden good morning everyone i'd like to start 00:43:17.359 --> 00:43:21.839 by observing that to one degree or another 00:43:21.839 --> 00:43:25.760 at most academic institutions library budgets 00:43:25.760 --> 00:43:29.520 have been declining or otherwise constrained 00:43:29.520 --> 00:43:36.480 prior to the onset of the covet pandemic that was certainly the case at my 00:43:36.480 --> 00:43:40.960 university the pandemic has brought on additional 00:43:40.960 --> 00:43:47.040 budget pressures on our universities which has necessitated broad and deep 00:43:47.040 --> 00:43:54.960 budget cuts which likely highly likely will continue and not 00:43:54.960 --> 00:43:56.720 recover 00:43:56.720 --> 00:44:03.520 well into the for foreseeable future so we have transitioned at this point in 00:44:03.520 --> 00:44:07.359 time from a generally not so good into a 00:44:07.359 --> 00:44:13.599 horrible severe physical environment 00:44:16.480 --> 00:44:23.520 in such physical realities were compelled to restructure and 00:44:23.520 --> 00:44:31.119 rebalance our budgets and that includes library budgets this is uh 00:44:31.119 --> 00:44:34.240 what drives us at our individual institutions 00:44:34.240 --> 00:44:39.920 and also collectively to take urgent action 00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:44.640 simply put academic library financial models 00:44:44.640 --> 00:44:51.200 that made good sense some time ago at least in some institutional settings 00:44:51.200 --> 00:44:56.560 are no longer terrible nor sustainable 00:44:56.560 --> 00:45:00.160 big deals occupy a significant footprint on 00:45:00.160 --> 00:45:05.280 our collections budgets in george mason university's case 00:45:05.280 --> 00:45:08.640 it is roughly one-third of our current uh library 00:45:08.640 --> 00:45:12.880 uh research materials budget 00:45:12.960 --> 00:45:16.640 but i think the financial uh 00:45:16.960 --> 00:45:23.359 the the impacts of uh the pandemic uh on our finances 00:45:23.359 --> 00:45:29.680 in in in all the effects of that uh just accelerate the inevitable 00:45:29.680 --> 00:45:34.400 collapse of the status quo 00:45:35.040 --> 00:45:39.280 for all the reasons talked about by my colleagues already 00:45:39.280 --> 00:45:44.880 we need to make drastic changes to our library collection strategies 00:45:44.880 --> 00:45:48.000 and such changes will not be temporary uh 00:45:48.000 --> 00:45:52.480 or reversible uh given the current crisis 00:45:52.480 --> 00:46:00.640 and in retrospect it's something we have needed to do for some time 00:46:00.640 --> 00:46:04.720 uh so what do we do now and going forward 00:46:04.720 --> 00:46:09.040 it is important to be strategic in our decision making 00:46:09.040 --> 00:46:14.160 we need to do more than just meet immediate spending targets 00:46:14.160 --> 00:46:18.319 some strategies will have commonalities across institutions 00:46:18.319 --> 00:46:22.240 while other approaches will need to address specific and 00:46:22.240 --> 00:46:27.680 perhaps unique institutional circumstances and needs 00:46:27.680 --> 00:46:33.359 as we discontinue big deals we need to allocate funds to cover costs 00:46:33.359 --> 00:46:38.480 for other forms of access for example in their library loan and 00:46:38.480 --> 00:46:43.040 document delivery commercial article purchases 00:46:43.040 --> 00:46:49.839 tools for discovery of open access content and so forth 00:46:49.839 --> 00:46:53.599 based on reports by some institutions we have already 00:46:53.599 --> 00:47:02.160 departed big deals we know the costs for alternative access are more manageable 00:47:02.240 --> 00:47:06.240 even in some cases they can be characterized 00:47:06.240 --> 00:47:14.319 as typically modest in in some institutional settings 00:47:14.319 --> 00:47:17.599 we need to create capacity as well as scope 00:47:17.599 --> 00:47:24.720 in our collections budgets to be able to better fund where we expect growth 00:47:24.720 --> 00:47:28.160 to redirect funding to areas where we may have 00:47:28.160 --> 00:47:34.160 unmet needs and importantly to invest in more sustainable ways of 00:47:34.160 --> 00:47:39.839 sharing research across our institutions uh and and much 00:47:39.839 --> 00:47:45.280 more broadly so uh in concluding uh my remarks 00:47:45.280 --> 00:47:51.680 uh i would say that we are at a point um where 00:47:51.680 --> 00:47:56.160 most if not all of us are faced with historic reality 00:47:56.160 --> 00:48:03.680 of significantly diminished budgets we demand for scholarly uh scientific 00:48:03.680 --> 00:48:06.800 resources in associated services are not 00:48:06.800 --> 00:48:10.640 diminishing uh but they are growing in our 00:48:10.640 --> 00:48:15.760 institutions so the game plan that worked relatively 00:48:15.760 --> 00:48:20.160 well for many of us in the past has to be 00:48:20.160 --> 00:48:23.839 recalibrated and changed to more effectively respond 00:48:23.839 --> 00:48:28.319 to the current and future challenges 00:48:28.319 --> 00:48:38.800 this is inevitable thank you thank you so much john and um so 00:48:38.800 --> 00:48:45.440 the next question i want to ask uh relates to the way the complicated we've 00:48:45.440 --> 00:48:49.520 been talking a little bit about how there's a kind of complex ecosystem here 00:48:49.520 --> 00:48:52.880 and what's interesting and maybe fewer of our 00:48:52.880 --> 00:48:56.000 folks in the audience will know is that each vendor 00:48:56.000 --> 00:48:59.280 sort of has a complicated ecosystem of products 00:48:59.280 --> 00:49:04.240 that it sells and i wonder teresa not from vcu if you could help us understand 00:49:04.240 --> 00:49:08.640 a little bit better how big deals relate to other products 00:49:08.640 --> 00:49:14.319 in the vendors portfolios and how we're thinking about the 00:49:14.319 --> 00:49:19.280 consequences of the choices we might have to make as they could kind of 00:49:19.280 --> 00:49:22.880 reverberate throughout that vendor ecosystem 00:49:22.880 --> 00:49:26.240 sure thank you brandon and good morning everyone so 00:49:26.240 --> 00:49:30.079 vendors like elsevier and wiley have been pivoting to 00:49:30.079 --> 00:49:33.760 being a data analytics business for some time 00:49:33.760 --> 00:49:37.760 they are striving to monetize the insights that they gain 00:49:37.760 --> 00:49:41.119 into the research that our institutions do 00:49:41.119 --> 00:49:45.200 by their control of the literature additionally they are building products 00:49:45.200 --> 00:49:48.559 that plug into every step of the research flow 00:49:48.559 --> 00:49:53.599 these products are designed to simply seamlessly integrate with each other 00:49:53.599 --> 00:49:59.359 and thus entice customers to buy more of their products to leverage the seamless 00:49:59.359 --> 00:50:03.680 integration there is a real danger to academic 00:50:03.680 --> 00:50:07.920 freedom here scholarship to scholarship is shaped by 00:50:07.920 --> 00:50:12.559 the metrics we use to evaluate scholars and by controlling 00:50:12.559 --> 00:50:15.839 metrics vendors are given an outsize influence 00:50:15.839 --> 00:50:19.839 on the trajectory of research itself 00:50:20.240 --> 00:50:24.240 often these products are marked or excuse me are marketed to 00:50:24.240 --> 00:50:28.400 different campus units such as the provost or the office of research 00:50:28.400 --> 00:50:32.319 this can undermine our efforts to control the cost for the library 00:50:32.319 --> 00:50:36.079 for those products that we license so it's really 00:50:36.079 --> 00:50:40.480 important that we communicate and coordinate across the university as well 00:50:40.480 --> 00:50:46.480 as across the commonwealth for vcu and other customers elsevier 00:50:46.480 --> 00:50:50.559 links pricing across products and contracts so we have 00:50:50.559 --> 00:50:54.000 to be especially careful to anticipate how changes will ripple 00:50:54.000 --> 00:50:58.559 out in our particular case our clinical key contract 00:50:58.559 --> 00:51:03.760 is linked to the continuation of our current science direct license agreement 00:51:03.760 --> 00:51:08.319 over the last few years we have asked clinical key to 00:51:08.319 --> 00:51:15.359 align the contracted dates so the clinical key contract would be 00:51:15.359 --> 00:51:19.200 in sync with sciencedirect and they've refused to do this 00:51:19.200 --> 00:51:23.680 from what we can glean from others this seems to be a common practice 00:51:23.680 --> 00:51:28.400 and so i think that they use these different 00:51:28.400 --> 00:51:32.000 termination dates to put you in this bind of 00:51:32.000 --> 00:51:35.200 well i'm going to have to cancel this if the other 00:51:35.200 --> 00:51:39.839 is in question so in fact we are in the process of terminating our clinical key 00:51:39.839 --> 00:51:43.680 contract at this moment as we move into renegotiating with 00:51:43.680 --> 00:51:47.359 elsevier and one of the most important things 00:51:47.359 --> 00:51:50.640 about these agreements from my perspective is that they lack 00:51:50.640 --> 00:51:55.359 transparency so our clinical key agreement is written 00:51:55.359 --> 00:51:59.520 in such a way where there's a nebulous increase should 00:51:59.520 --> 00:52:03.760 we walk away from our science direct contract so we don't 00:52:03.760 --> 00:52:07.680 know what the consequences are for us to walk away 00:52:07.680 --> 00:52:18.240 and this is representative of other things that happen with other contracts 00:52:18.240 --> 00:52:21.520 thanks theresa so this is a this is a complex system 00:52:21.520 --> 00:52:24.880 this is a really complex system that we're working in um 00:52:24.880 --> 00:52:28.480 and you know that's part of why it's taken us a while to think through what 00:52:28.480 --> 00:52:30.960 to do um but we're feeling pretty good about 00:52:30.960 --> 00:52:34.400 where we are now and we're also starting to think about the 00:52:34.400 --> 00:52:40.240 future and i wanted to ask carrie cooper to kind of bring us home 00:52:40.240 --> 00:52:42.559 here and talk a little bit about what a 00:52:42.559 --> 00:52:46.880 sustainable future might look like you know if we transition away from 00:52:46.880 --> 00:52:51.200 something uh that we have lots of problems with um what is what 00:52:51.200 --> 00:52:54.800 does the world look like if we uh if we find something better what's a 00:52:54.800 --> 00:52:57.839 better model going to bring us to thank you brandon i think it's really 00:52:57.839 --> 00:53:02.400 important to kind of imagine what that does look like it 00:53:02.400 --> 00:53:06.480 helps us get there just by imagining it and i think we have to get back to our 00:53:06.480 --> 00:53:12.079 values equitable access diverse collections and fair costs 00:53:12.079 --> 00:53:15.839 for example a future with equitable access would 00:53:15.839 --> 00:53:21.280 erase the global divide and um in access to research for both readers 00:53:21.280 --> 00:53:25.200 and authors it would demonstrate our commitment to 00:53:25.200 --> 00:53:30.480 solving big problems beyond the higher education community it 00:53:30.480 --> 00:53:34.880 would let faculty authors retain their rights and share and reuse 00:53:34.880 --> 00:53:38.960 their work it would enable text and data mining 00:53:38.960 --> 00:53:42.720 across all published research and it would end 00:53:42.720 --> 00:53:46.000 high author fees that create new barriers 00:53:46.000 --> 00:53:51.839 to research publication this time for authors instead of the readers 00:53:51.839 --> 00:53:55.920 and a future with diverse collections would better meet the unique needs of 00:53:55.920 --> 00:54:01.200 our research communities because one size doesn't fit all 00:54:01.200 --> 00:54:06.800 it would foster scholar-led initiatives at our institution that brings control 00:54:06.800 --> 00:54:10.880 back to our scholarly community and most 00:54:10.880 --> 00:54:15.040 importantly it would support independent and underrepresented voices and outlets 00:54:15.040 --> 00:54:17.760 and approaches 00:54:17.839 --> 00:54:22.720 a future with fair costs would end non-disclosure agreements that prevent 00:54:22.720 --> 00:54:28.319 healthy competition and foster transparency about how prices 00:54:28.319 --> 00:54:31.760 how the price of the product relates to the operation of 00:54:31.760 --> 00:54:36.880 a service it would end unfair tactics like double dipping 00:54:36.880 --> 00:54:42.000 where we charge the libraries and we charge the authors 00:54:42.000 --> 00:54:47.599 and it would lower costs for students with open educational resources 00:54:47.599 --> 00:54:50.880 it would help us avoid a bigger deal that would just replace 00:54:50.880 --> 00:54:55.760 unsustainable subscriptions with unsustainable author fees 00:54:55.760 --> 00:55:00.160 so it's really about getting back to our values equitable access 00:55:00.160 --> 00:55:04.000 diverse collections and fair costs i hope that helps 00:55:04.000 --> 00:55:07.839 us imagine what this looks like 00:55:08.160 --> 00:55:12.559 thanks carrie thanks a lot and so yeah that's the future we're looking 00:55:12.559 --> 00:55:16.880 toward and uh that that sort of concludes the the 00:55:16.880 --> 00:55:19.440 questions that we heard from the group with 00:55:19.440 --> 00:55:23.359 a group of registrants with one a little bonus i wanted to 00:55:23.359 --> 00:55:28.079 to include um we had a few questions i know there's a lot of librarians in the 00:55:28.079 --> 00:55:31.599 audience who were curious about how we're doing this and 00:55:31.599 --> 00:55:35.200 you know how are we gonna how are we going to pull this off and 00:55:35.200 --> 00:55:39.040 the good news is for us especially we're not the first 00:55:39.040 --> 00:55:41.839 ones to go here and we're not the only ones to do this 00:55:41.839 --> 00:55:47.839 right now and so we really wanted to recognize some of 00:55:47.839 --> 00:55:50.720 the folks that are that have paved the way and who are 00:55:50.720 --> 00:55:54.480 walking this road with us now and i wanted to um i think we've 00:55:54.480 --> 00:56:00.559 elevated now david carlson and naraya lamas um to panelists status 00:56:00.559 --> 00:56:04.319 and i wondered if uh maybe starting with narea 00:56:04.319 --> 00:56:08.240 um if uh maria if you could tell us a little bit about the university of north 00:56:08.240 --> 00:56:12.720 carolina's experience going through this process uh and 00:56:12.720 --> 00:56:16.000 and having concluded a deal with elsevier that you all are happy 00:56:16.000 --> 00:56:20.640 with and that now you're working forward on yes thank you brandon good morning 00:56:20.640 --> 00:56:22.720 everyone i'd be happy to tell you a little bit 00:56:22.720 --> 00:56:26.160 about our process and and where we are today with it 00:56:26.160 --> 00:56:31.359 so we started our elsevier negotiation in spring of 2019 00:56:31.359 --> 00:56:37.839 and we had a goal of not necessarily breaking the deal but we 00:56:37.839 --> 00:56:40.960 needed to spend less and we decided a million dollars was 00:56:40.960 --> 00:56:46.079 what we wanted to cut from our spend with elsevier and just before 00:56:46.079 --> 00:56:49.760 we started to talk with them we decided we needed to do an 00:56:49.760 --> 00:56:53.440 informational campaign on campus and so we launched our own 00:56:53.440 --> 00:56:57.359 sustainable scholarship campaign and it started with our 00:56:57.359 --> 00:56:59.839 university librarian she started doing some 00:56:59.839 --> 00:57:03.119 presentations i did them it went all the way down to 00:57:03.119 --> 00:57:08.480 our liaisons we spread it across campus in meetings and departmental settings 00:57:08.480 --> 00:57:12.960 and one-on-ones in administrator meetings so 00:57:12.960 --> 00:57:17.520 we really took it far and wide we went out with four values 00:57:17.520 --> 00:57:21.000 we talked about affordability sustainability 00:57:21.000 --> 00:57:27.920 transparency and open and public access and we everyone understands open access 00:57:27.920 --> 00:57:31.680 but we needed to add in the public because carolina is a very public 00:57:31.680 --> 00:57:34.880 institution and we believe in that public mission 00:57:34.880 --> 00:57:38.319 and so we believe that that would resonate well with our campus 00:57:38.319 --> 00:57:45.440 and it and it truly did um at the same time that we were talking to 00:57:45.440 --> 00:57:49.200 campus about sustainable scholarship which was 00:57:49.200 --> 00:57:52.000 partly around elsevier but it was a much 00:57:52.000 --> 00:57:56.160 broader message that we were trying we were trying to contextualize 00:57:56.160 --> 00:57:59.680 the landscape and trying to say that we could not 00:57:59.680 --> 00:58:02.400 continue in the same way that we always had with 00:58:02.400 --> 00:58:05.680 these big deals and in fact we had already 00:58:05.680 --> 00:58:09.200 gone through a process of breaking big deals before we had broken the wiley 00:58:09.200 --> 00:58:12.799 deal a couple years before i came on board and so 00:58:12.799 --> 00:58:17.119 this was not an unfamiliar message but i think it was the first time that we 00:58:17.119 --> 00:58:23.680 really explained what this meant and why it was not sustainable so at the same 00:58:23.680 --> 00:58:28.319 time that we were going out there with our message 00:58:28.319 --> 00:58:32.960 talking to elsevier we were also not knowing what the outcome would be 00:58:32.960 --> 00:58:36.960 investigating how we would take care of scholar needs 00:58:36.960 --> 00:58:40.240 if we did break this deal and and canceled many 00:58:40.240 --> 00:58:44.880 uh journals and so we spent a lot of time like other institutions have 00:58:44.880 --> 00:58:51.200 looking at options for ill including reprints desk which is a vendor who 00:58:51.200 --> 00:58:55.440 has an automated system and and ultimately we did incorporate reprints 00:58:55.440 --> 00:58:59.440 desk into our strategy um 00:58:59.440 --> 00:59:04.000 i wanna i wanna acknowledge uh what teresa was talking about with 00:59:04.000 --> 00:59:09.280 clinical key we had the exact same problem our clinical key was was 00:59:09.280 --> 00:59:14.160 going to be up at the end of september they ignored our attempts to talk to 00:59:14.160 --> 00:59:16.640 them and until they finally got the 00:59:16.640 --> 00:59:21.040 cancellation message we said we are canceling we no longer need this 00:59:21.040 --> 00:59:25.280 we we cannot go forward if we don't know what the cost will be 00:59:25.280 --> 00:59:29.599 at the end of this negotiation and they scrambled a little bit 00:59:29.599 --> 00:59:33.920 they came back they tried to get us back ultimately we just canceled 00:59:33.920 --> 00:59:38.960 um and so that happened before we got to the end of our negotiation with 00:59:38.960 --> 00:59:45.280 sciencedirect with elsevier and um so by the time we got to spring 00:59:45.280 --> 00:59:48.880 of 2020 so it took us a year more than a year to 00:59:48.880 --> 00:59:54.480 get to the to the final point we uh had decided we were going to break 00:59:54.480 --> 00:59:57.680 the bundle we were going to go title by title 00:59:57.680 --> 01:00:04.559 we decided to go out and ask the campus about their use of titles we were 01:00:04.559 --> 01:00:10.720 concerned about clinical uh titles and clinical usage in in our med 01:00:10.720 --> 01:00:14.559 school in our hospitals and other clinical settings and so 01:00:14.559 --> 01:00:17.520 essentially we went out and asked them how they use 01:00:17.520 --> 01:00:22.160 their titles so that we could focus in on on those clinical titles and those 01:00:22.160 --> 01:00:25.920 became the core of the package or the title list that we have now i 01:00:25.920 --> 01:00:30.480 shouldn't say package we have 395 titles down from the 01:00:30.480 --> 01:00:34.559 maybe couple thousand that we had to begin with and our spend 01:00:34.559 --> 01:00:38.720 uh for this for this year was at 1.6 million so we brought it down 01:00:38.720 --> 01:00:45.200 by a million um it was i will say a tremendous amount of work 01:00:45.200 --> 01:00:48.720 we had many many people in the library involved 01:00:48.720 --> 01:00:53.839 again from the university librarian down to our liaisons across our tech services 01:00:53.839 --> 01:00:56.960 this is this is an enormous effort that has to go 01:00:56.960 --> 01:01:03.680 in but it was well worth it um we have uh we talked to so many people 01:01:03.680 --> 01:01:07.839 on campus that messaged us afterwards and said thank you for 01:01:07.839 --> 01:01:12.160 breaking that deal with elsevier we are so happy can we do that with other 01:01:12.160 --> 01:01:16.960 publishers we have real champions now on campus 01:01:16.960 --> 01:01:20.000 that's not to say that it's all rosy there are problems 01:01:20.000 --> 01:01:26.400 um with access at at times for people that's never gonna go away but by 01:01:26.400 --> 01:01:30.960 and large um we i think were successful in doing 01:01:30.960 --> 01:01:33.520 this and i just looked at a couple numbers 01:01:33.520 --> 01:01:36.880 before i came on to the webinar this morning 01:01:36.880 --> 01:01:42.559 uh just our reprints desk numbers we were didn't know what to expect because 01:01:42.559 --> 01:01:45.040 we offered it out there for people who needed 01:01:45.040 --> 01:01:49.200 their articles urgently out between may and august 01:01:49.200 --> 01:01:53.599 out of the 276 articles we have purchased from reprints desks 01:01:53.599 --> 01:01:58.799 only 123 are from elsevier titles so by and large the needs are being met 01:01:58.799 --> 01:02:03.599 through regular interlibrary loan through our historic access so as 01:02:03.599 --> 01:02:07.119 mentioned earlier we have permanent access to back files 01:02:07.119 --> 01:02:12.720 so most most people's uh needs are being taken care of through regular means 01:02:12.720 --> 01:02:16.319 and uh having the reprints desk is just a 01:02:16.319 --> 01:02:21.839 piece of mind for everyone i'll stop there 01:02:22.559 --> 01:02:26.240 thank you so much norea that's um it's just so heartening to know 01:02:26.240 --> 01:02:31.119 uh how well your experience turned out um but also it's to take to take 01:02:31.119 --> 01:02:34.319 note of how hard this can be and how much work it is 01:02:34.319 --> 01:02:37.839 but knowing it pays off i think especially for those of us 01:02:37.839 --> 01:02:41.520 on uh in the panelists side of things uh you know 01:02:41.520 --> 01:02:45.760 it gives us great comfort to know that there's life on the other side and 01:02:45.760 --> 01:02:50.960 things turn out pretty well so next i wanted to ask david carlson 01:02:50.960 --> 01:02:55.760 the dean of libraries at the texas a m university to say a little bit about 01:02:55.760 --> 01:03:00.319 where the texas libraries are and i know you're in the midst of 01:03:00.319 --> 01:03:03.599 negotiations and so you'll have to be uh cagey 01:03:03.599 --> 01:03:07.200 but um but maybe you could also just say how you got here 01:03:07.200 --> 01:03:10.400 and um what the values were that brought you 01:03:10.400 --> 01:03:14.960 to negotiating in a new way this time around than you have in the past 01:03:14.960 --> 01:03:18.960 sure i i don't i don't want to think of myself as being cagey brandon i think 01:03:18.960 --> 01:03:23.359 circumspect would be maybe uh a better word but you're right and that was going 01:03:23.359 --> 01:03:27.599 to be the first thing i was going to say uh is that i do need to be circumcised 01:03:27.599 --> 01:03:32.640 and what i say for a couple reasons uh number one strategically of course we we 01:03:32.640 --> 01:03:35.280 don't want to in any negotiations process you don't 01:03:35.280 --> 01:03:38.480 want to say everything about how you're how you're thinking what 01:03:38.480 --> 01:03:42.640 you're doing but also i want to respect the negotiations process itself with 01:03:42.640 --> 01:03:47.520 without severe so and let me just also say that i i'm just so impressed with 01:03:47.520 --> 01:03:51.119 uh all the comments by all the speakers you have no idea 01:03:51.119 --> 01:03:54.880 i mean i've been jotting things down and my head's been shaking up and down and 01:03:54.880 --> 01:03:58.799 affirmation um all of the values and statements and 01:03:58.799 --> 01:04:04.000 perspective you've been saying are just uh really have aligned with uh what 01:04:04.000 --> 01:04:09.200 we've been doing um i mean there's so much to say about 01:04:09.200 --> 01:04:12.160 this uh and i certainly agree with a lot of 01:04:12.160 --> 01:04:16.880 the perspectives that have already been said in terms of how we got 01:04:16.880 --> 01:04:19.839 here i think whenever anybody asks me about 01:04:19.839 --> 01:04:23.599 this i always have to give a shout out to the university of california 01:04:23.599 --> 01:04:27.839 um i think the university of california um 01:04:27.839 --> 01:04:31.280 position and statement on this and their decisive nature 01:04:31.280 --> 01:04:34.960 on our decision on this stand on this i should say 01:04:34.960 --> 01:04:39.039 about a year and a half ago now getting up to two years was really in my opinion 01:04:39.039 --> 01:04:42.880 the game changer um all of a sudden i practically the 01:04:42.880 --> 01:04:46.640 week that happened um all of a sudden i was getting emails 01:04:46.640 --> 01:04:50.559 uh and queries from people i'd never heard from before 01:04:50.559 --> 01:04:54.240 about this issue who would say well what are we doing in this space 01:04:54.240 --> 01:04:58.400 and they just gave all of us i think a kind of a backbone 01:04:58.400 --> 01:05:02.960 um to this issue that said exactly what you were saying brandon this this can be 01:05:02.960 --> 01:05:06.720 done uh it's not jumping off a cliff uh there 01:05:06.720 --> 01:05:10.559 is survival uh for a number of different reasons many of which you've touched 01:05:10.559 --> 01:05:13.680 upon and the discussion has also reminded me 01:05:13.680 --> 01:05:16.559 that when when we put out the press release about 01:05:16.559 --> 01:05:20.559 the texas coalition i got a wonderful unsolicited email from 01:05:20.559 --> 01:05:24.799 stanley wander walder at lsu who has also done a lot of 01:05:24.799 --> 01:05:28.079 the same unbundling significant unbundling that unc 01:05:28.079 --> 01:05:32.240 described and uh he just as i say and an 01:05:32.240 --> 01:05:36.079 unsolicited email and he wanted us to take comfort and he 01:05:36.079 --> 01:05:40.720 told us that the uh the decision at unc was at lsu excuse 01:05:40.720 --> 01:05:43.920 me as and i quote a perfect unmitigated 01:05:43.920 --> 01:05:47.039 success they have absolutely no regrets and 01:05:47.039 --> 01:05:50.559 they're moving forward and uh everything i won't say everything is 01:05:50.559 --> 01:05:53.359 well but perfect but it but it's pretty good 01:05:53.359 --> 01:05:59.359 um not only is there survival uh it's much better than that life is good 01:05:59.359 --> 01:06:02.720 so um our approach to the business has been 01:06:02.720 --> 01:06:06.000 in a number of ways first of all our coalition is quite different 01:06:06.000 --> 01:06:10.480 i'm really very very proud of it but it's also very diverse 01:06:10.480 --> 01:06:14.960 it includes both public institutions and private institutions so we have 01:06:14.960 --> 01:06:18.480 all the university of texas libraries texas a m et cetera 01:06:18.480 --> 01:06:22.400 but we also have really some premier and leading 01:06:22.400 --> 01:06:25.520 private libraries such as rice university 01:06:25.520 --> 01:06:28.799 baylor university etc we have some very strong 01:06:28.799 --> 01:06:32.799 research intensive institutions and we have some very 01:06:32.799 --> 01:06:36.160 teaching intensive institutions so it's a very diverse group 01:06:36.160 --> 01:06:39.200 one of the things that has really brought us together 01:06:39.200 --> 01:06:44.960 is that we have all agreed and signed on to a memorandum of understanding about 01:06:44.960 --> 01:06:49.520 our organization a little bit of explicit analysis of 01:06:49.520 --> 01:06:52.400 what our views and values are and a little 01:06:52.400 --> 01:06:58.559 briefly about how we are organized and it was required that that be signed 01:06:58.559 --> 01:07:03.599 by an upper-level administrative person at the university and that has done 01:07:03.599 --> 01:07:06.319 i mean i thought it was a good idea to do this from the beginning for a number 01:07:06.319 --> 01:07:09.200 of reasons but it's turned out to be an even better idea 01:07:09.200 --> 01:07:12.640 than i anticipated because it really got the institution 01:07:12.640 --> 01:07:16.160 to talk about this commitment formally and seriously 01:07:16.160 --> 01:07:20.079 and then to actually put a put a name and a statement in a signature document 01:07:20.079 --> 01:07:24.559 that said yes we're in on this so lastly i'll just i'll just conclude 01:07:24.559 --> 01:07:29.680 by saying a few things about very broadly about what our approach to 01:07:29.680 --> 01:07:33.839 negotiations is which i think will harmonize with a lot of what you said 01:07:33.839 --> 01:07:40.240 um we are not set on de-bundling unbundling excuse me we are not set on 01:07:40.240 --> 01:07:44.160 withdrawal or walking away from negotiations we are 01:07:44.160 --> 01:07:47.520 not set on a transformative agreement but 01:07:47.520 --> 01:07:52.720 what we are set on is change we think it's high time for 01:07:52.720 --> 01:07:56.799 change substantive change i remember in one of 01:07:56.799 --> 01:08:01.280 our early meetings with our elsevier representatives they referred to their 01:08:01.280 --> 01:08:05.760 contract one of the representatives referred to their contract as byzantine 01:08:05.760 --> 01:08:11.119 i think this was a frank moment and i agree with them a hundred percent 01:08:11.119 --> 01:08:15.520 we have contracts that are based on decades old commitments of print 01:08:15.520 --> 01:08:20.880 subscriptions it's it's absurd uh and so that needs to 01:08:20.880 --> 01:08:23.600 change and then secondly the other commitment 01:08:23.600 --> 01:08:28.400 we have is to price reduction um an additive approach is no longer 01:08:28.400 --> 01:08:31.920 appropriate and we need to get to price reductions for many of the reasons 01:08:31.920 --> 01:08:35.679 you've talked about so i'll wrap up there but thank you for for 01:08:35.679 --> 01:08:39.679 all of this and thank you for the time to speak briefly about the texas after 01:08:39.679 --> 01:08:42.159 efforts 01:08:44.400 --> 01:08:48.319 thank you so much david um circumspect as always 01:08:48.319 --> 01:08:51.600 uh and and lovely and lovely to see you as always 01:08:51.600 --> 01:08:54.960 thanks so much for sort of being our guest today um 01:08:54.960 --> 01:09:00.319 and you know i think we probably uh we we are very much aligned with the texas 01:09:00.319 --> 01:09:04.480 libraries uh about what the priorities are and what we're looking for 01:09:04.480 --> 01:09:10.799 um so that thus ends the uh planned portion the scripted 01:09:10.799 --> 01:09:14.000 portion if you will of the program and now we've got 01:09:14.000 --> 01:09:18.480 actually a substantial amount of time which is lovely uh to hear from your 01:09:18.480 --> 01:09:25.120 kind of live questions during the forum and so um 01:09:25.120 --> 01:09:29.120 i've got in front of me here a list of some of those questions 01:09:29.120 --> 01:09:35.759 and i wonder if we could start with a question for actually we'll bring in 01:09:35.759 --> 01:09:38.480 one perhaps let's see let me we're testing the tech 01:09:38.480 --> 01:09:42.560 here but we've got a little time um i'm going to ask if jordan our tech 01:09:42.560 --> 01:09:46.000 guru could bring in ann osterman who is the 01:09:46.000 --> 01:09:49.759 executive director of viva and see if she wants to answer this 01:09:49.759 --> 01:09:54.320 question about how viva and the virtual library of virginia 01:09:54.320 --> 01:09:59.199 represent figures into all of this stuff 01:10:00.800 --> 01:10:07.600 i don't see and we're putting you on the spot if that's okay 01:10:08.239 --> 01:10:12.480 and we see you or we we here heard you 01:10:14.840 --> 01:10:17.840 momentarily 01:10:19.040 --> 01:10:24.480 hmm all right well the joys of live television here 01:10:24.480 --> 01:10:31.120 um we might then yes john yeah i think i think i could 01:10:31.120 --> 01:10:34.480 take this as the chair of the steering committee for 01:10:34.480 --> 01:10:40.640 for um there are a number of uh 01:10:40.640 --> 01:10:45.840 subscriptions that viva pays for uh or contributes to 01:10:45.840 --> 01:10:50.000 that are extremely important to member libraries the elsevier contract's not 01:10:50.000 --> 01:10:54.480 one of those um and i guess in this context that's 01:10:54.480 --> 01:10:59.760 the most important point and i i think one reason that it's not 01:10:59.760 --> 01:11:03.760 a viva collection is that it's so expensive 01:11:03.760 --> 01:11:08.159 and that spreading that cost to say community colleges 01:11:08.159 --> 01:11:13.520 uh in the viva system wouldn't really make sense and that's why the virginia 01:11:13.520 --> 01:11:19.040 research libraries a subset of viva uh have negotiated together in the past 01:11:19.040 --> 01:11:23.040 for the elsevier contract and are are planning to do so 01:11:23.040 --> 01:11:27.840 again we would love to see broader access 01:11:27.840 --> 01:11:33.920 to some of that content that will depend on on price more than anything 01:11:33.920 --> 01:11:36.080 else 01:11:36.880 --> 01:11:40.239 brandon could i jump in and add just one more thing here 01:11:40.239 --> 01:11:47.120 unless we've got an audio all right seems like maybe not the other thing i'd 01:11:47.120 --> 01:11:51.840 like to add is that we are all part of this rich and vibrant 01:11:51.840 --> 01:11:56.560 viva network and through the resource-sharing 01:11:56.560 --> 01:12:00.480 partnerships that stretch all over the commonwealth of virginia 01:12:00.480 --> 01:12:04.239 we know that what we do as research institutions impact 01:12:04.239 --> 01:12:08.800 others and and you know i'm still relatively new to my role but i have 01:12:08.800 --> 01:12:11.760 found the intersection between the vrl 01:12:11.760 --> 01:12:16.480 partners and viva to be thoughtful rich vibrant and we 01:12:16.480 --> 01:12:23.840 we know that um that we're all connected and all in this together 01:12:25.760 --> 01:12:31.760 excellent thanks bethany um so uh the next question i wanna i wanna go to 01:12:31.760 --> 01:12:35.280 is actually um very well put and i wanna thank jay 01:12:35.280 --> 01:12:38.880 albanese for asking the question and i'm going to maybe read a little bit of it 01:12:38.880 --> 01:12:42.640 at length and then i'll ask tyler walters if he wants to respond 01:12:42.640 --> 01:12:45.840 jay says it seems to me that most academics 01:12:45.840 --> 01:12:49.679 or at least many academics are not as well informed about the access crisis 01:12:49.679 --> 01:12:55.280 as they could be and i've read where 70 plus of social science journals are 01:12:55.280 --> 01:12:59.040 owned by just five corporations and hidden behind a paywall that's true 01:12:59.040 --> 01:13:02.400 uh consolidation is a big problem in this market 01:13:02.400 --> 01:13:05.920 um so this works directly against the goal of global access 01:13:05.920 --> 01:13:10.320 and uh in social science the relevance of social science to 01:13:10.320 --> 01:13:13.600 applied fields and access to that for practitioners so 01:13:13.600 --> 01:13:18.320 to keep one's research open and access in these journals requires exorbitant 01:13:18.320 --> 01:13:22.159 publication fees my question what do you think of 01:13:22.159 --> 01:13:27.520 so-called diamond journals which require no fees for authors and are open access 01:13:27.520 --> 01:13:30.800 to readers i have published in a couple of them in 01:13:30.800 --> 01:13:33.840 recent years and found the quality of reviews is the same 01:13:33.840 --> 01:13:38.880 as other journals and the timeliness in review to publication is much shorter 01:13:38.880 --> 01:13:42.960 but of course they're new and they're not yet considered leading journals 01:13:42.960 --> 01:13:47.360 because academics appear to be led by prestige i.e the age of the journal 01:13:47.360 --> 01:13:52.080 rather than prioritizing access and dissemination to their work so 01:13:52.080 --> 01:13:56.239 these diamond journals the diamond model is really attractive because it's free 01:13:56.239 --> 01:14:00.320 to authors and free to readers tyler i wonder if you could talk a 01:14:00.320 --> 01:14:04.800 little bit about that free to authors free to readers model 01:14:04.800 --> 01:14:08.719 yeah thanks brandon i can so yeah there's a lot that's excellent question 01:14:08.719 --> 01:14:13.280 and a lot to unpack there um i guess i would start by saying you know 01:14:13.280 --> 01:14:17.520 open access in its most simplest form is about the scholarship 01:14:17.520 --> 01:14:22.560 being freely available for readers so i i'm the way i think about this is i 01:14:22.560 --> 01:14:25.199 kind of decouple that from the business model 01:14:25.199 --> 01:14:30.960 of how a journal derives revenue to pay for its expenses and we've seen a 01:14:30.960 --> 01:14:34.239 very popular model for especially around stem 01:14:34.239 --> 01:14:38.960 journals is the apc author page charges the diamond or 01:14:38.960 --> 01:14:43.520 platinum it's also called open access it doesn't involve that it's more about 01:14:43.520 --> 01:14:47.840 sponsorship that's taking care of of the cost 01:14:47.840 --> 01:14:52.080 so i can give you an example i was involved in a journal 01:14:52.080 --> 01:14:56.960 uh that is a platinum journal that's about 16 years old now it's called 01:14:56.960 --> 01:15:00.080 information technology and international development 01:15:00.080 --> 01:15:05.360 that's going great guns and it's uh now sponsored by the annenberg school 01:15:05.360 --> 01:15:07.600 out of the university of southern california 01:15:07.600 --> 01:15:12.400 but it's scholar-led it's independent he said hanneberg sponsors it now 01:15:12.400 --> 01:15:16.560 and it's it has just been it's been excellent it's been online for 01:15:16.560 --> 01:15:20.800 i think all but the first two years of its experience 01:15:20.800 --> 01:15:24.400 so i think it's an example of a scholar-led 01:15:24.400 --> 01:15:28.320 independent journal and it's high quality so 01:15:28.320 --> 01:15:32.400 the other part of all of this is the peer review system as 01:15:32.400 --> 01:15:36.000 jay as you said the uh the reviews seem to be very good if 01:15:36.000 --> 01:15:40.880 anything shorter in time and the the business model should be 01:15:40.880 --> 01:15:43.760 completely separated from the peer review model peer review 01:15:43.760 --> 01:15:47.199 in these kind of journals can be just as robust as 01:15:47.199 --> 01:15:52.560 any any journal out there any uh commercially sponsored uh 01:15:52.560 --> 01:15:56.719 scholarly journal so there's you know there's a lot to be said for that i 01:15:56.719 --> 01:16:00.320 think people shouldn't shy away from those the 01:16:00.320 --> 01:16:04.480 other problem that you're pointing to is kind of this prestige culture that we 01:16:04.480 --> 01:16:08.000 have as faculty around our scholarly journals 01:16:08.000 --> 01:16:11.760 and how do we find which ones seem to be most valuable 01:16:11.760 --> 01:16:13.920 well many times it's the list of names and 01:16:13.920 --> 01:16:18.400 their reputations who are on the editorial boards uh the length of 01:16:18.400 --> 01:16:21.520 time something's been out but i think we need to be putting 01:16:21.520 --> 01:16:26.239 increasing value on journals that help us help us meaning 01:16:26.239 --> 01:16:29.679 universities and our faculty to get new scholarship 01:16:29.679 --> 01:16:33.280 out there in a broad and fast way and that's where 01:16:33.280 --> 01:16:36.800 we have the most impact of society especially as a as a 01:16:36.800 --> 01:16:40.400 public university here at virginia tech we serve the state 01:16:40.400 --> 01:16:43.280 we serve the world and it's about getting new research out 01:16:43.280 --> 01:16:46.560 there so it has that positive impact it helps the people who 01:16:46.560 --> 01:16:50.480 need it that's you know that's actually the old cooperative extension service 01:16:50.480 --> 01:16:54.159 model from that's still going on today from from years ago 01:16:54.159 --> 01:16:57.760 so we need to question that that prestige aspect of it 01:16:57.760 --> 01:17:01.199 and can we not see that perhaps more valuable 01:17:01.199 --> 01:17:06.400 or at least as valuable is this broad and fast access 01:17:08.560 --> 01:17:12.159 excellent thanks tyler and so our next question 01:17:12.159 --> 01:17:17.679 uh comes from david burdige and actually before i get to that question we had a 01:17:17.679 --> 01:17:21.760 we had someone ask about uh if there are tweeting rules and uh 01:17:21.760 --> 01:17:24.239 lisa i i follow your tweets of things all the 01:17:24.239 --> 01:17:29.920 time and uh the rule is please tweet uh this is a live event open you know 01:17:29.920 --> 01:17:31.760 we're going to make it all publicly available 01:17:31.760 --> 01:17:38.080 so tweet at your tweet a tweet it will um so the next question uh from david 01:17:38.080 --> 01:17:40.719 burdidge and apologies if i got your name wrong 01:17:40.719 --> 01:17:43.920 um david asks part of the problem as i see 01:17:43.920 --> 01:17:47.280 it is that with the rise of the internet we've gotten used to 01:17:47.280 --> 01:17:52.480 and now expect immediate access to anything we want you know at no cost 01:17:52.480 --> 01:17:56.400 is it not unreasonable to think that if we adjust our expectations 01:17:56.400 --> 01:18:02.159 so that we get what we want or need uh with perhaps a little delay a day or so 01:18:02.159 --> 01:18:05.760 we can cut costs dramatically with very little real impact 01:18:05.760 --> 01:18:09.920 on scholarly activity and productivity and that really goes to 01:18:09.920 --> 01:18:13.760 uh something we were talking about earlier in terms of alternative access 01:18:13.760 --> 01:18:18.400 and and you know timing being in in fact one of the main things that will change 01:18:18.400 --> 01:18:23.440 or the only thing that may change um so i wonder if any of our panelists 01:18:23.440 --> 01:18:28.719 would want to comment a little bit more and expand on those ideas 01:18:33.840 --> 01:18:36.880 sure i'll jump in i just want to say thanks jay 01:18:36.880 --> 01:18:44.080 that's great it's really nice to know that um faculty um you know i i do think 01:18:44.080 --> 01:18:48.800 that faculty um understand um the 01:18:48.800 --> 01:18:53.920 situation that higher education is in and i would like to see that faculty 01:18:53.920 --> 01:18:58.320 would be willing to wait a day um or a reasonable amount of time 01:18:58.320 --> 01:19:02.159 um i you know i believe in the structures and the systems that we 01:19:02.159 --> 01:19:04.960 already have in place i think we're gonna i think we're gonna 01:19:04.960 --> 01:19:08.719 do great i think we're gonna meet your expectations or exceed your expectations 01:19:08.719 --> 01:19:12.640 if the big deal goes away so i just want to thank you for asking 01:19:12.640 --> 01:19:17.199 that question i do think that um lowering expectations 01:19:17.199 --> 01:19:21.520 just a little bit um might really help us um but um 01:19:21.520 --> 01:19:25.520 i think we're gonna we're gonna surprise you 01:19:28.320 --> 01:19:33.600 absolutely would anybody else like to comment on that 01:19:39.760 --> 01:19:43.280 the part of the question about getting access to anything we want at no 01:19:43.280 --> 01:19:49.920 cost um there have been great costs and we have obscured that from our 01:19:49.920 --> 01:19:54.400 faculty colleagues in trying to make access easy for all of 01:19:54.400 --> 01:19:58.159 you which is still our goal but but part of what we're doing here 01:19:58.159 --> 01:20:01.920 today is sharing with you you know the unsustainable burden that 01:20:01.920 --> 01:20:06.320 those costs have placed and the impact on other parts of the 01:20:06.320 --> 01:20:10.239 scholarly communication ecosystem by putting too much of our 01:20:10.239 --> 01:20:13.600 money in one space 01:20:15.679 --> 01:20:18.800 hugely important point yeah what we're doing now is 01:20:18.800 --> 01:20:23.280 is closing a communication loop that has not been closed for a long time and it's 01:20:23.280 --> 01:20:27.120 so important you know when the primary user 01:20:27.120 --> 01:20:31.360 doesn't know what something costs it's very hard for them to understand 01:20:31.360 --> 01:20:36.960 the trade-offs involved and you know and how the whole system works so 01:20:36.960 --> 01:20:42.239 i have another good another great question this one from richard poinder 01:20:42.239 --> 01:20:46.639 richard asks i am wondering what the implications 01:20:46.639 --> 01:20:53.360 might be for the ill system if universities rely on it increasingly 01:20:53.360 --> 01:20:58.800 if they unbundle and switch to using things like interlibrary loan 01:20:58.800 --> 01:21:03.840 as a mode of access and here any of our deans could answer 01:21:03.840 --> 01:21:09.040 and i also narea i wonder if you could you could expand a little bit on 01:21:09.040 --> 01:21:11.760 what you've seen in terms of interlibrary loan 01:21:11.760 --> 01:21:17.760 use since unc made the changes in its bundle that might be a place to start 01:21:17.760 --> 01:21:21.840 sure so we uh our deal with elsevier 01:21:21.840 --> 01:21:27.040 ended at the end of may um so that's it's a really short period of 01:21:27.040 --> 01:21:31.040 time that we have to measure the impact of the unbundling 01:21:31.040 --> 01:21:34.320 especially with the pandemic sort of on top of that 01:21:34.320 --> 01:21:37.600 and the change in research and teaching so 01:21:37.600 --> 01:21:41.360 all of those caveats to say that we haven't seen very much 01:21:41.360 --> 01:21:45.600 at all of an increase in interlibrary loan 01:21:45.600 --> 01:21:48.719 interlibrary loan has been as steady as it can be we 01:21:48.719 --> 01:21:52.400 were closed for a number of months and so the only interlibrary loan we did was 01:21:52.400 --> 01:21:56.960 for electronic resources which would include the 01:21:56.960 --> 01:22:00.639 articles and we saw that a pretty stay pretty 01:22:00.639 --> 01:22:04.000 steady and as i indicated before we did give 01:22:04.000 --> 01:22:09.120 people options for uh requesting expedited articles 01:22:09.120 --> 01:22:13.040 through reprint's desk and those have been very minimal so i i 01:22:13.040 --> 01:22:14.800 think i think there are a couple of things 01:22:14.800 --> 01:22:21.360 happening one is that the expectation perhaps is right people are waiting 01:22:21.360 --> 01:22:25.440 and don't need things immediately and regular interlibrary loan 01:22:25.440 --> 01:22:28.880 works for them quite well um i i think the 01:22:28.880 --> 01:22:35.199 other piece of it is that um we did a very good job 01:22:35.199 --> 01:22:38.960 in selecting the articles that were needed in the journal titles that were 01:22:38.960 --> 01:22:42.159 needed immediately and i say that because we focused in on 01:22:42.159 --> 01:22:46.400 the clinical titles which everyone told us they needed to have at hand 01:22:46.400 --> 01:22:52.080 and because we did that i think we took care of a large part of that urgent need 01:22:52.080 --> 01:22:55.440 so from our perspective interlibrary loan 01:22:55.440 --> 01:23:02.320 works well i do have questions around long term how well will we do 01:23:02.320 --> 01:23:08.320 as we all start to unbundle and cancel how much access will we have but i think 01:23:08.320 --> 01:23:12.880 we it's hard to tell at this point in time 01:23:14.080 --> 01:23:17.920 thanks so much norea yeah that that that experience 01:23:17.920 --> 01:23:21.360 is consistent with what's been published you know lots of libraries have been 01:23:21.360 --> 01:23:24.880 down this road and there's pretty deep research from 01:23:24.880 --> 01:23:29.440 folks that have been uh down this road for a few years and 01:23:29.440 --> 01:23:34.080 they look back and they still see that you know if you as you say if you choose 01:23:34.080 --> 01:23:38.800 wisely in the things that you keep the interlibrary loan volume is actually 01:23:38.800 --> 01:23:42.880 quite modest um and that's just another kind of proof 01:23:42.880 --> 01:23:45.600 of something that we said earlier in the presentation which is 01:23:45.600 --> 01:23:49.280 a lot of the stuff that we're paying for right now people really don't 01:23:49.280 --> 01:23:55.280 read that often at all or ever so when we cut those things uh they it 01:23:55.280 --> 01:23:58.400 turns out nobody comes looking for them because they were never reading them in 01:23:58.400 --> 01:24:03.679 the first place um so i want to go down to 01:24:03.679 --> 01:24:10.480 another question um let's see we have quite a few good ones 01:24:10.480 --> 01:24:14.560 um i have another one from 01:24:14.560 --> 01:24:21.679 lisa henschleff about viva and wiley so lisa says viva had a wily 01:24:21.679 --> 01:24:25.760 agreement that funded open access publishing 01:24:26.560 --> 01:24:30.159 and is there a goal to support open access 01:24:30.159 --> 01:24:33.840 publishing in uh in elsevier journals or other 01:24:33.840 --> 01:24:38.400 uh journals or are we focused on cutting the cost of access 01:24:38.400 --> 01:24:43.440 uh and and saving saving money so i wonder if any of the this is a 01:24:43.440 --> 01:24:47.520 tricky this is a tricky question but i wonder if anyone in our group 01:24:47.520 --> 01:24:53.520 wants to take a take a shot at this question of 01:24:53.520 --> 01:24:59.520 you know open access big deals and costs how are we thinking about that 01:24:59.520 --> 01:25:02.159 in this course brandon uh yeah it looks like anne's 01:25:02.159 --> 01:25:07.760 successfully reconnected uh if she's able to this would be a good 01:25:07.760 --> 01:25:13.120 question for her to begin i hope you can hear me so 01:25:13.120 --> 01:25:20.880 victory um well yeah i think in so many ways open access is a critic 01:25:20.880 --> 01:25:24.880 moving that forward is critical to our member libraries to the consortium 01:25:24.880 --> 01:25:28.560 i think finding the right fit for that can be very challenging 01:25:28.560 --> 01:25:32.480 we've talked about a variety of ways of doing that in terms of 01:25:32.480 --> 01:25:37.440 the large publishers getting a a really good take on the holistic spend 01:25:37.440 --> 01:25:41.679 is critical in the read and publish i like i'll let these folks speak to 01:25:41.679 --> 01:25:45.600 the elsevier specifically because that's not a big deal but we also talk a lot 01:25:45.600 --> 01:25:49.040 about controlling apc costs and and really 01:25:49.040 --> 01:25:52.560 containing those they're they kind of run rampant at times and 01:25:52.560 --> 01:25:57.440 there's not a whole lot of transparency we also want to have an eye 01:25:57.440 --> 01:26:02.719 on new models for smaller publishers as well as possible infrastructure 01:26:02.719 --> 01:26:06.480 so i think i just want to emphasize there's there's no doubt that open 01:26:06.480 --> 01:26:10.000 access is key to all of us in moving these things forward 01:26:10.000 --> 01:26:13.040 but it's not always with the big publishers that we see it 01:26:13.040 --> 01:26:16.400 in the same way and i'd love to have someone here talk about the 01:26:16.400 --> 01:26:26.159 elsevier aspect of that thanks tan um so would any of the 01:26:26.159 --> 01:26:29.920 deans in the group want to say something about elsevier in particular 01:26:29.920 --> 01:26:33.600 and keeping in mind uh circle inspection at this stage 01:26:33.600 --> 01:26:38.480 right um but what what what can we say about open access 01:26:38.480 --> 01:26:42.159 in connection with elsevier in particular 01:26:45.040 --> 01:26:49.440 well uh brandon i think we can say uh essentially what 01:26:49.440 --> 01:26:52.800 has been said already which is 01:26:53.360 --> 01:26:57.199 we're not in pursuit of a transformative agreement 01:26:57.199 --> 01:27:01.440 here we are interested as are the other libraries 01:27:01.440 --> 01:27:05.120 that have spoken about this process we're interested in reducing 01:27:05.120 --> 01:27:07.600 our spend 01:27:09.760 --> 01:27:13.360 thanks john yeah i think that's that's a nice clear way to put it 01:27:13.360 --> 01:27:16.800 um and so we've got just a few minutes left but there's a great question that 01:27:16.800 --> 01:27:21.199 just came in uh from anita waltz at virginia tech 01:27:21.199 --> 01:27:27.280 about you know we could now this is a you know we're in a budget crisis and we 01:27:27.280 --> 01:27:30.159 have to just basically balance our budgets and 01:27:30.159 --> 01:27:33.679 you know make our way through but if we have savings 01:27:33.679 --> 01:27:36.800 um i wonder if we can say a little bit about 01:27:36.800 --> 01:27:40.480 what we would do i mean part of our opening argument was things are out of 01:27:40.480 --> 01:27:43.280 balance in our collection or they will be soon 01:27:43.280 --> 01:27:46.560 if we don't if we don't put the brakes on some of 01:27:46.560 --> 01:27:50.239 these deals so what will we do if we're able to change 01:27:50.239 --> 01:27:53.760 the paradigm and we experience some of the savings that we've seen at 01:27:53.760 --> 01:28:04.000 places like unc who wants to take that one on tyler i 01:28:04.000 --> 01:28:06.880 see your hand raised sure i can take a stab and 01:28:06.880 --> 01:28:10.560 hi anita thanks for being here um you know what's going to happen with the 01:28:10.560 --> 01:28:13.600 funds saved well you know we had some thoughts 01:28:13.600 --> 01:28:17.199 and ideas and of course the the economic situation we're in now 01:28:17.199 --> 01:28:20.320 that's pandemic related the quick answer is going to be whatever 01:28:20.320 --> 01:28:23.440 savings we get first it's going to be put toward all of our 01:28:23.440 --> 01:28:26.960 own budget cuts i i think i can speak for the group that you know we're all 01:28:26.960 --> 01:28:29.840 facing some budget cuts and some of the savings 01:28:29.840 --> 01:28:34.000 want to be used towards that the other thing i'd say keep in mind that you know 01:28:34.000 --> 01:28:37.440 one mode of access we probably will will use quite regularly 01:28:37.440 --> 01:28:41.520 is going to be some form of commercial document delivery service and that does 01:28:41.520 --> 01:28:47.360 cost so some money needs to be set aside for that as well uh we could have 01:28:47.360 --> 01:28:50.639 increased inter-library loan costs perhaps outside of virginia within 01:28:50.639 --> 01:28:54.639 virginia we don't charge one another as you know um but there could be 01:28:54.639 --> 01:28:57.440 increased costs so i think those are the some quick 01:28:57.440 --> 01:28:59.760 things that we would do we gotta we gotta 01:28:59.760 --> 01:29:03.040 protect our budgets we've gotta think about how we fund 01:29:03.040 --> 01:29:07.280 alternate modes of access with that money as well 01:29:09.440 --> 01:29:13.760 excellent thanks a lot tyler so we're coming to the last couple of minutes 01:29:13.760 --> 01:29:18.320 um and i think maybe uh this would be a good time just to sort of 01:29:18.320 --> 01:29:21.360 just to sort of summarize where we've been right 01:29:21.360 --> 01:29:25.199 so these seven libraries have been working together 01:29:25.199 --> 01:29:29.520 uh now uh for years and years uh to strategize 01:29:29.520 --> 01:29:32.800 uh to ensure that we're developing we're delivering the resources that our 01:29:32.800 --> 01:29:36.159 scholars need uh in the best way that we can to serve 01:29:36.159 --> 01:29:42.400 the full diverse range of interests research interests on our campuses and 01:29:42.400 --> 01:29:46.159 we are now i think embarking on a little bit of a paradigm shift 01:29:46.159 --> 01:29:50.320 and we are not doing it alone we're part of a global movement 01:29:50.320 --> 01:29:54.560 and we're not the first ones to do it we really appreciate the folks that have 01:29:54.560 --> 01:29:58.480 walked this path ahead of us and we also will need your 01:29:58.480 --> 01:30:00.880 support and so for all the folks from our 01:30:00.880 --> 01:30:05.600 campuses who joined us who joined this event today we just 01:30:05.600 --> 01:30:09.040 really want to ask you to think about what you've heard 01:30:09.040 --> 01:30:12.480 today talk to your colleagues about it come 01:30:12.480 --> 01:30:15.760 back and talk to us about any questions you have 01:30:15.760 --> 01:30:18.880 help us understand the things that you need 01:30:18.880 --> 01:30:22.639 and um and and just the concerns that you have 01:30:22.639 --> 01:30:27.040 and uh i think all of us are really um actually excited to have these 01:30:27.040 --> 01:30:31.360 conversations now about the work that we're doing together 01:30:31.360 --> 01:30:34.080 and the ways that the world is changing and that we're 01:30:34.080 --> 01:30:37.520 trying to help change it for the better so 01:30:37.520 --> 01:30:42.639 i i think i will be presumptuous enough to say on behalf of the group 01:30:42.639 --> 01:30:50.080 as we come to 11 a.m thank you so much for joining us this morning and 01:30:50.080 --> 01:30:53.679 uh and for going with us on this kind of journey 01:30:53.679 --> 01:30:58.639 and we look forward to working with you as we make these changes together and to 01:30:58.639 --> 01:31:01.440 continuing to support research on our campuses 01:31:01.440 --> 01:31:04.480 and thank you to the beans this was a fun conversation 01:31:04.480 --> 01:31:08.239 thanks everybody for for taking part 01:31:12.800 --> 01:31:17.840 and everyone have a lovely friday 01:31:33.120 --> 01:31:35.199 you