This tool is saving universities millions of dollars in journal subscriptions - Science Magazine

But Unsub revealed that by spending $2 million a year for just 248 of the journals, the university could give researchers at its 64 campuses immediate access to roughly 70% of the Elsevier papers they are likely to read in the next 5 years.

The tool produces its forecasts by analyzing data from each university’s library journal usage, and by scouring the web to see how many of the papers that faculty and students access are already available for free.

Unsub is a “game changer,” says Mark McBride, SUNY’s library senior strategist in Albany, and “I don’t think I’m the only one who thinks that.” Like many universities chafing at high subscription fees and fearing the budget impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, SUNY was looking for savings.

And with the help of Unsub, McBride says, it concluded “a big deal is no longer necessary in order for a library to function effectively.”.

Priem says 300 libraries have already signed up for the tool,  and he expects it to lead to more cancellations on big deals in the summer.

For SUNY, Unsub showed that a modest number of subscriptions would be enough to supplement the large numbers of Elsevier papers already available outside of paywalls.

Of the papers SUNY researchers can access under the new arrangement, about 30% are already free to read through open access and 25% are available from SUNY’s backlog because the university has subscribed to these journals for several years.

McBride says SUNY did its own calculations about which journals it needed to continue paying for, and the results are in line with Unsub’s numbers.    .

As for papers not available under the new deal, he says, individual campuses can subscribe to additional journals they deem necessary, or buy temporary access to papers from other libraries through interlibrary loans.

Another option, he says, will be paying for individual papers through document delivery services.

Nathan Mealey, associate university librarian for discovery & access at Wesleyan University, which also uses Unsub, says it’s inevitable that the pandemic will prompt other universities to do the same.