Challenges in scholarly publishing
Transforming journal publishing
The N8 Research Partnership, of which Sheffield is a member, has recently released a statement advising that the current dominant models of scholarly publishing, largely driven by commercial publishers, are financially unsustainable for institutions. This page provides researchers with more information, and outlines the work taking place at Sheffield on how to fund a more equitable and sustainable scholarly publishing ecosystem.
Approximately 80% of our Library content budget is currently spent on journal subscriptions. We have over 800 active subscriptions including print and electronic journals, academic databases, specialist e-resources and other ongoing fees. Our largest subscriptions - often known as ‘big deals’ - consist of bundles of sometimes hundreds of journal subscriptions with major academic publishers such as Wiley, Taylor and Francis, Springer Nature and Sage. Big deals are national deals negotiated by Jisc on behalf of the whole UK Higher Education sector. Pricing is usually based on institutional size and standardised licenses.
Big deals provide access to large amounts of content, but included in these bundles is a lot of material that has limited use. For example the Taylor & Francis ‘big deal’ contains around 2,250 titles of which 210 account for 50% of usage (the top 55 account for 25% of usage).
Publishers use this expanded content to justify the high cost and the consistent above-inflation price rises. They are also motivated to increase the number of titles in a package to charge more, and do this by splitting existing journals into multiple, separate titles and by launching new titles. This has contributed to the proliferation of journals and the - arguably damaging - reliance on journal metrics developed to handle the expansion.
What have the ‘big deals’ got to do with open access?
Increasingly, the big deals are being converted to ‘transitional’ or ‘Read and Publish’ agreements that combine both access to paywalled material and open access publishing for affiliated corresponding authors. The aim of Read and Publish deals is to drive rapid growth of open access whilst avoiding ‘double dipping’ - paying once for journal subscriptions, and again for per article open access fees (Article Processing Charges or APCs). For the past five years, the University has subscribed to an increasing number of Read and Publish deals (see our current deals here), and many Sheffield authors have been able to publish their journal articles Gold open access at no direct cost to themselves. However, a 2024 Jisc review of the deals found that although they have managed to contain costs to some extent on a sector level, there are long term sustainability concerns, and savings will be harder to achieve in future. The review also found that: a) publishers were not transparent about costs, b) that institutions were heavily reliant on open access funding from UKRI (which is not guaranteed), and c) that many articles were published under the deals that could have been made compliant with funder policies using green open access.
UEB has agreed proposals to significantly reduce Library spending on resources over a three-year period. The main focus is on the largest ‘big deals’ (including Sage, Springer Nature, Taylor and Francis, and Wiley) which are due to expire in December 2025.
Next steps - background to the Jisc Next Generation Open Access programme
The University, along with universities nationally, work with Jisc to secure fair and transparent deals through two representative groups: the UUK / Jisc Content Negotiation Strategy Group and the Jisc Content Expert Group. Professor Sue Hartley (Vice President for Research) is the Chair of the former. The Next Generation Open Access programme from Jisc is working for transformational change in journal agreements, starting with the big five publishers.
Specifically, agreements should:
- drive cost reduction and control, ensuring long-term affordability
- offer flexible open access options to accommodate diverse needs
- support the global transition to full open access
- ensure inclusive participation across all research disciplines
- provide transparency around fees, pricing structures and practices
- streamline workflows to enhance operational efficiency
- foster open research practices and uphold research integrity
Jisc leads negotiations and presents institutions such as ours the opportunity to feedback on their direction.
What does a good deal look like?
The traditional model of academic publishing, where research (often funded by public money and written and peer reviewed without payment by academics) is published behind a paywall has long been criticised as unfair and inequitable. Many research funders such as UKRI, the Wellcome Trust and the EU, seek to make the outputs of publicly funded research immediately available for free to the public. However, while the mechanisms of academic publishing are controlled by commercial interest, the move towards open access publishing has brought in another revenue stream for publishers, and subscription costs have largely not declined.
Libraries are looking for deals that convert larger and larger proportions of research to immediate open access, that restrain costs and transparently demonstrate how public money is being spent. This includes deals which support the use of rights retention policies such as our own Research Publications and Copyright Policy. The ultimate aim is to move publishers away from a business model that relies on, in essence, taking content hostage and ransoming it back to researchers through their libraries, to one where publishers offer transparent, reasonably priced, value added services around open access content. Negotiating this transition is difficult, especially as some publishers have come to rely on large profit margins but libraries are seeking deals that drive towards this objective.
Updates on the Jisc Next Generation Open Access programme can be found on our big deals news page.
Beyond big deals - investing in equitable open access
The Library is committed through its Comprehensive Content Strategy to bibliodiversity and the transformation of academic publishing to allow for “ethical, sustainable, open access for all” and we recognise the limitations of current models, which are dominated by a small number of profit-driven publishers. We therefore also use a proportion of our content budget to invest in a range of open access initiatives for both journals and monographs, contributing to a scholarly publishing ecosystem which is more equitable, affordable, and where no one is excluded from making their work open access due to cost. You can find out more about the open access initiatives we subscribe to here.
Investing in open infrastructure
Infrastructure (e.g. repositories, platforms, tools enabling discoverability, digital preservation) is an important and necessary element of a federated and diverse publishing system. The Library is committed to supporting useful and robust infrastructures which will enable the move towards open access publishing (examples include ArXiv, CLOCKSS, DOAJ and Thoth Metadata).
Transforming academic book publishing
Traditional academic book publishing relies on sales to cover the cost of publishing (editorial, typesetting, printing, marketing), to fund future development, and - in the case of commercial publishers - to make a profit to be paid out to investors.
Many academic books are very expensive, so are only available to staff and students of the increasingly small number of university libraries that are able to purchase them. Textbooks are often offered via unsuitable models, such as annual subscriptions or as part of larger collections of books.
Open access options for books are becoming increasingly common, and ensure that content is more widely accessible to all. However, they often require the payment of a Book Processing Charge of £6,000-15,000 per book, and it is not financially viable to pay these charges for all books published by University of Sheffield staff, as well as purchasing traditionally published books for our library collections.
In recent years an increasing number of universities have founded their own open access presses (including our own White Rose University Press), publishing OA monographs on a not-for-profit basis. Established publishers are also looking for ways to increase the number of open access books published under non-BPC models. Organisations such as Open Book Collective have been established to support publishers develop sustainable funding models for open access books. We provide funding for White Rose University Press, as well as contribute to a number of other OA monograph initiatives as part of our support for equitable open access. For more information about how to make your own books and chapters open access, please see our open access guidance for TUoS staff and students.
With regards to textbooks, libraries are beginning to challenge expensive publishing models and exploring alternatives such as Open Educational Resources (OER). Whilst OER are common in North America with well-established collections such as the Open Textbook Library, the UK is somewhat behind. We are aiming to remedy this nationally through the establishment of the OER Community of Practice for the UK and Ireland and locally through the efforts of the University’s OER Steering Group.