Big deal, bad deal?

In March 2019, Florida State University lost its access to Elsevier. Without renewing a $2 million annual license agreement, 6,000 researchers and 40,000 students cannot access the 1,800 journals of the world’s leading publisher. Articles must now be purchased individually, which is about $20-30 for a PDF. A year later, the balance sheet is quite different. The big deal is still the preferred negotiation framework between the 5 major publishers and universities. However, licenses have been increasingly cancelled since 2015 and may well reach record figures in 2020. This briefing note reviews the development and characteristics of the economy of the big deal from 1995 to 2020.

[Article in French]