From: Louis Houle <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2014 14:51:45 +0000

I would like to make some clarification regarding this text since the
section where a comparison is made between Université de Montréal
(UdeM) and McGill is misleading. We have to remember that what
constitutes the largest portion of the cost for an institution’s Big
Deal, like this one from Wiley, is its core subscriptions list: i.e.
subscriptions held at the institution’s library when the license was
initiated. I do not think that we have had any “special conditions”
applied here at McGill because we have had this package for a longer
period than UdeM. Yes, we have been early adopters for both Wiley and
Blackwell e-journal packages like many of you and came in with our
core subscription titles for both collections more than ten years ago.
Price of subscriptions were also lower at that time then they were
three, five or seven years ago. The time factor here that we
benefitted from, like many of you, has been to protect our self from
higher individual price increases by negotiating price cap increases
on multi-year deals. We also made a decision at the time to not keep
print duplicate subscriptions for the titles included in those two
packages. The Wiley-Blackwell License moved from regional consortia
agreements to a national one (CRKN) in 2010.

As we can see, there are many factors affecting the price of Big Deals
but the most important one is your core subscriptions list that you
had at the time you entered the license agreement.

Louis Houle
Director Collection
McGill University



From: LibLicense-L Discussion Forum
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of LIBLICENSE
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2014 19:50
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: The library of the Université de Montréal vs. Wiley

From: Jean-Claude Guédon <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2014 16:31:32 -0500
It has long argued that the cost of access to scholarly and
periodicals was rising at an unsustainable rate. Here is confirmation
of the fact.

Recent budgetary cutbacks in the Province of Quebec have led the
director of libraries at the Université de Montréal (disclosure: my
university) to refuse to renew the "Big Deal" with Wiley. The
publisher has responded by rather drastic price offers and absurd
arguments (as you will be able to read below). In effect - and this is
a new one for me - your subscription rates with a publisher may depend
on how long a faithful customer you have been. In other words, if you
are not a good boy or a good girl, we shall punish you. In the
airplane industry, I had heard of frequent travellers enjoying free or
cheap upgrades, but I had never heard that less frequent travellers
had to pay more for their seats! Are publishers even worse than
airlines?


I have translated the French-language announcement that is available
on the site of our libraries and which you can check for yourself if
Molière's tongue is not too esoteric for you. The URL is
http://www.bib.umontreal.ca/communiques/20140115-DB-annulation-periodiques-wiley.htm

One conclusion emerges immediately: confidentiality clauses are
something to be rejected generally, as a collective move to put the
publishers on notice that the advantage of the panoptic position is
not theirs alone. The prisoner's dilemma is not to be accepted.

The second thing to mention is that the director of our libraries is
going to need all the support he can get from both within the
university (and he has it here) and across all universities,
especially ARL universities. I should hope that messages of support
and ideas as to tactics, as well as sharing of similar experiments may
converge toward him at [log in to unmask] . Canadian
librarians, in particular, should quickly show their full support for
the courageous move of our Library Director.

Here is the announcement aimed at the university community that came
out last afternoon and which I translated this morning:



*******

January 14th, 2014. Out of 1510 periodicals in the Wiley Online
Library, the Université de Montréal is cancelling subscriptions to
1142 titles at the end of January. As a result, and from this point
on, the articles found in the cancelled titles will no longer be
available on-line. However, access to earlier issues will be entirely
maintained.

This action results from a process that started a long while ago. The
financial cut-backs imposed by the Québec government only accelerated
the decision process. The result of the analysis is simple: libraries
have been driven to the wall because of the yearly rise of
subscriptions to periodicals that hover between 3% and 6%. They cannot
go on cutting back the acquisition of monographs to compensate for
such price increases. As a result, this conclusion, as well as the
adopted solution, would have been the same a few years down the line,
independently of the financial context.

Please note that libraries at McGill University also subscribe to the
periodicals owned by John Wiley &Sons. In 2014, the Université de
Montréal pays as much as McGill but can access only 368 periodicals
while McGill benefits from full access to the 1510 titles in the Wiley
collection. The publisher refuses to grant us the same conditions as
McGill because – such is the pretext - McGill has subscribed to the
Wiley Online Library longer. If, this year,the Université de Montréal
wanted access to the full collection, it would have to add
$243,000(Canadian) to what McGill pays despite the fact that usage of
Wiley periodicals at the Université de Montréal is 45% lower than at
McGill.

The unique characteristics of each periodical is what has allowed
publishers, for several years, to hold its university customers
captive.Publishers can set prices at will, and do so all the more
easily that the market is concentrated in the hands of 5 multinational
companies. Stéphanie Gagnon, Head of collections at the Université de
Montréal, explains that “John Wiley & Sons is one of the
multinationals with which we must deal”.

Since 1986, in the larger universities of North America, the
acquisition budget for periodicals has grown four times as fast as
inflation. The pace of these increases is unsustainable and a crisis
cannot be avoided. This reasoning has brought the Administration of
the Libraries at the Université de Montréal to begin a campaign aiming
at increasing the university community's consciousness in this regard.

Louise Béliveau, Vice-President (students and sustainable development)
of the Université de Montréal believes that “the research community
must rally together if better financial conditions are to be obtained:
few publishers will take the chance that a revolt might deprive them
of their raw materials and a free work force. Yet, it is clear that
libraries alone will not succeed because they simply do not carry the
weight of the publishers' oligopoly.”

The Administration of the libraries is fully conscious that such
cancellations will impact teaching and research: the maintained
subscriptions correspond to 71.4% of use in 2012. To alleviate this
situation a little, the $3.00 fee for inter-library loans of articles
is cancelled.

In the coming months, Professor Vincent Larivière, an expert in
bibliometrics and infometrics who holds a Research Chair in our School
of Library and Information Science, will work on refining the
methodology used to select periodicals. This will be followed by a
broad consultation of researchers which, in 2015, will likely lead to
various decision updates.

In Summary

In 2012, John Wiley & Sons has announced profits amounting to $437
millions of dollars out of a total revenue stream of 1 billion
dollars.
In our university, financial cutbacks imposed by the Québec Government
have translated into decreases in acquisition in 2012-3 and 2013-4.
The libraries at the Université de Montréal will renew their
subscriptions to 368 periodicals (out of the 1510 titles that make up
the full collection of Wiley Online Library). For the same cost,
McGill University has access to the full collection.
Wiley Periodicals that have been published before 2014 will remain accessible.
The subscriptions that have been maintained correspond to 71.4% of use in 2012.
Periodical articles can be ordered through Inter-library loans (ILS).
Delivery is done by e-mail and within five business days. The $3 fee
is cancelled to soften the impact of cancellations.
The method used to select titles will be refined and will be followed
by a consultation of researchers. The list of titles that are
maintained will be modified accordingly.


A line has to be drawn in the sand!

Jean-Claude Guédon


Professeur titulaire
Littérature comparée
Université de Montréal