Leaving Elsevier's "big deal": an evaluation of the Italian National Institute of Health experience inside the Bibliosan Consortium

Abstract:  In 2011 the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS), the Italian National Institute of Health, has been forced, due to economic reason, to leave the Bibliosan Consortium contract with the publisher Elsevier. The contract, following the “big deal” model, provided for the maintenance of paper subscriptions and the payment of an additional fee for the whole electronic collection (more than 2,000 journal titles). The continuous increase of annual costs has led to unsustainable growth in costs and to the subsequent cancellation of the contract. This meant that more than 500 researchers of the Institute have suddenly had access to just 180 Elsevier current titles instead of the previous 2,000. The study traces the various stages which led to taking this unavoidable decision to cut about half of the Elsevier’s journals and analyzes its impact.