British Library Group Doesn't Ditch Elsevier and Wiley-Blackwell - Wired Campus - The Chronicle of Higher Education

"A major British library group announced today that it has struck new deals with Elsevier and Wiley-Blackwell, two of the largest publishers of academic journals. The group, Research Libraries U.K., had threatened to discontinue so-called Big Deal subscription arrangements with the two publishers because of what it called unsustainable price increases....The new deals with Elsevier and Wiley-Blackwell “serve as new benchmarks for our relations with other publishers, as RLUK’s members will no longer accept massive unjustified price rises,” Phil Sykes, chair of the group, said in a statement. “We will continue to scrutinize 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.” The new deal was negotiated on behalf of the group’s 30 member libraries by JISC Collections....Citing nondisclosure agreements, the library group offered few details about the new deals but estimated they will save U.K. institutions more than £20 million....Today the group also said it would push to drop nondisclosure agreements from future agreements because it believes that “the interests of public institutions are best served by openness and transparency.” "