RLUK

RLUK Members welcome new and improved terms with largest journal publishers

For immediate release 01/12/11

Research Libraries UK (RLUK) welcomes the announcement that JISC Collections has secured better terms and conditions in deals with the two largest commercial publishers of academic research journals on behalf of the UK Higher Education sector.

Over the past year, RLUK has worked closely with JISC Collections and the UK HE community to negotiate journal deals with Elsevier and Wiley-Blackwell.  In recent years university libraries have seen significant rises in the subscription fees charged by major publishers, vastly outstripping the rate of inflation. 

By uniting its members, RLUK played a significant role in helping JISC Collections to secure deals which, it estimates, will save in excess of £20million for the UK’s Higher Education community over the lifetime of the agreements: £20 million that institutions would otherwise have had to find from cancelled journal subscriptions, fewer book purchases and reduced services for students and researchers.

RLUK Chair, Phil Sykes, said: 

“These deals serve as new benchmarks for our relations with other publishers, as RLUK’s members will no longer accept massive unjustified price rises.  We will continue to scrutinise all offers carefully in the future to make sure we get best value for money and to ensure that we do not pay for new, untested journal titles as part of ‘all-or-nothing’ packages.”

As part of the deals, changes in pricing  policy have been agreed which will better protect institutions from the uncertainty of currency fluctuations, making it easier to manage budgets.

Confidentiality clauses mean details of the new deals cannot be published.  In line with its belief that the interests of public institutions are best served by openness and transparency, RLUK intends to continue to campaign for the removal of confidentiality clauses in future agreements.

ENDS

For further information please contact:

Phil Sykes, Chair, RLUK Board, P.Sykes@liverpool.ac.uk, +44 (0) 151 794 2674

Debby Shorley, Member, RLUK Board, d.shorley@imperial.ac.uk, +44 (0) 20 7594 8881