FEATURE: The Big Deal: Not Price But Cost

"Today, universities encourage researchers to publish as many peer-reviewed articles as possible, and the Big Deal (and its insupportable costs) is the logical consequence of such a policy.

But in today’s electronic environment, such a model is not only too expensive, but it is too slow and too wasteful. Like the two-for-the-price-of-one deals offered by supermarkets, it encourages overconsumption (or more precisely, overproduction). And thus as with the second pack of tomatoes that consumers end up throwing away, many papers are not even opened today, let alone consumed.

U.K. librarians should by all means put their cards on the table and demand that publishers show their hand. But if, as Shorley maintains, the core issue is not price but cost, then getting publishers to temporarily dial back the Big Deal will not address the real challenge confronting the research community: The challenge is not the price of journals or the price of Big Deals; it is the cost of maintaining a scholarly publishing system that is now past its sell-by date."