Downsizing from the Big Deal: What’s Education Got to do With It?

Abstract

With a tightening budgetary waistline, how can you still "suck it in" and still be able to breathe? Minimizing the impact on your faculty, undergraduates, graduates, and Ph.D. students as you wean yourself off those seductive and tantalizing Big Deals can be a tricky process. Using a blended approach which incorporates multiple years of use data from both the publisher and aggregators, impact factors from the Web of Knowledge Journal Citation Analysis, and finally consultations with the discipline librarians and faculty, we developed a process to identify essential titles from Big Deal packages. This multilayer approach ensures that high use titles are considered, quality is maintained, and budget requirements are met. Presenters looked at major journal publisher and the significant content within the education discipline to use as a template for other subject areas. This session will layout strategies for evaluating journal packages with the goal of identifying and retaining core titles if and when you make the decision to terminate your Big Deal agreement.