Deadlock breaks as RLUK announces new ‘big deal’ with Elsevier

"Earlier this year, Research Libraries UK said that it would not renew the “big deals” to secure access to the entire journal portfolios of Elsevier and fellow publishing company Wiley-Blackwell if they did not make “significant real-terms price reductions”. Wiley-Blackwell announced in late October that a three-year deal had been reached with Jisc Collections, the negotiating body for libraries, on “mutually beneficial terms”. Announcing yesterday that it had now also struck a five-year deal with Elsevier, RLUK estimated that the deal with the two publishers will save the sector around £20 million over the course of the deals. The organisation said that this was money “that institutions would otherwise have had to find from cancelled journal subscriptions, fewer book purchases and reduced services for students and researchers.” ...Phil Sykes, chair of RLUK, also welcomed the deal and said that it heralded “new benchmarks” for relations between the libraries and publishers. “RLUK’s members will no longer accept massive unjustified price rises,” he said...."