Seeking Campus Feedback During Elsevier Negotiations
To: Executive Vice Presidents, Chancellors, Vice Presidents, Vice Chancellors, Vice Provosts, Deans, Directors, and Heads of Schools, Divisions, Departments and Offices
From: Beth McNeil, Dean of Libraries
Date: November 23, 2020
Re: Seeking Campus Feedback During Elsevier Negotiations
In October 2020, we announced that Purdue University and its regional campuses had entered into contract negotiations with major for-profit academic publisher, Elsevier. Today, we write to you with an update on these negotiations and next steps.
Our negotiation team met with Elsevier again this fall. After multiple rounds of proposal reviews that failed to address our needs, and much discussion and deliberation, we concluded that the only appropriate path forward was to commit to a one-year, title-by-title contract for 2021. This decision was informed by local usage data, as well as data from Unsub, a tool that identifies high value titles and projects future spend. The great news is that Unsub revealed a high rate of usage retention under the new title-by-title model. West Lafayette campus is projected to retain access to 90% of its usage, while Purdue Northwest and Fort Wayne are projected to retain 88% and 85% of their usage, respectively.
Our next step is to hear from interested faculty, staff, and students across all three Purdue campuses. Libraries recently launched a libguide focused on sustainable scholarship, and we encourage you to visit, review the list of proposed Elsevier cancellations, and provide feedback using the Qualtrics form included on the libguide. Your needs and insights are important to us as we make final decisions regarding which Elsevier titles will be renewed and retained. The deadline to submit feedback is Friday, December 4, 2020.
We expect to deliver our final list of retained subscription titles to Elsevier in January 2021.
As always, we want to assure you that Libraries will provide campus with alternative means to access the content that our students, staff, researchers and faculty need to meet their information resource needs. Please visit our sustainable scholarship libguide, which includes information on how to get started with alternative access tools and resources.
Thank you, Beth McNeil
Dean of Libraries and Esther Ellis Norton Professor of Library Science