The University Executive Board has agreed proposals to significantly reduce Library spending on resources over a three-year period. Therefore the library is reviewing its journal subscriptions for 2026 onwards. 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. You can see the list of the other resources under review here (login required) and more information will follow.
Jisc is negotiating with the publishers on behalf of the UK higher education sector to work towards achieving a cost effective and fair deals.
Depending on the publishers’ offers, subscribing to all of these ‘big deals’ will potentially no longer be affordable and/or not align with our principles of cost constraint and value for money.
We have received the publisher proposals from Jisc and we are in the process of assessing them. We, along with other universities, will submit our response by the end of August on whether or not the proposals are acceptable ‘in principle’, or whether we want Jisc to seek improvements. If publishers are able to offer deals that are acceptable to the sector, the University will then decide which to subscribe to, based on affordability and value.
Further information about ‘big deals’ and the Jisc negotiations can be found on the Challenges in Scholarly Publishing page.