The -2.5% Commitment: A Modest Proposal for OA Week

"The way to start spending less on toll access literature is to start spending less on toll access literature. Start today. Libraries should slowly but surely divest from the biggest vendor oligopolies and invest instead in open alternatives. For decades they’ve been steadily growing their prices at rates that consistently outstrip inflation, the CPI, and our own budgets’ rate of growth, and they long ago outgrew any value proposition associated with the Big Deal. It is time to divest. Call it the “Negative 2.5% Commitment.”

This commitment is a natural counterpart to ideas like the 2.5% Commitment and Scholar-owned or Scholar-led OA, which call for increased investment in research communication infrastructure that our institutions own and/or control. In part, divesting from Big Deals is a necessity: if we are going to invest in new platforms that actually serve our users’ deepest interests in the long run, and we have not yet located a buried treasure somewhere, we have to find that money in our current budgets. What better source than the ridiculously inflated prices we are paying the biggest vendors?..."