Driving a hard bargain: negotiating the NESLI2 deals and the
prospects for the coming round
Liam Earney
JISC Collections
JIBS Workshop, York, 1 December 2010
JISC Collections
Agenda
 A bit about JISC Collections and NESLi2
 What did we set out to achieve for 2011?
 What did (or didn’t) we achieve?
 Reflections on negotiations in 2010
 Prospects for 2012
– Two very big deals
– Some other fairly big deals
– What do Institutions want?
– Changing nature of the UK consortium
– What does this mean for JISC Collections?
JISC Collections
JISC Collections: some facts and figures
 Over 200 separate agreements covering content of all kinds
– E-books
– Reference materials
– Full text
– A&I
– Geospatial
– Multimedia
– E-journals
 NESLi2: 17 publishers/1,050 separate orders
 NESLi2 journal ‘efficiency gains’ estimated at £13.5m in 2009/10
JISC Collections
What did we set out to achieve for 2011?
 Focus on price above all else
– target of 0% in all negotiations
– move away from 5% as ‘acceptable’
– Not just interested in the ‘e’ fee but total cost
 Retreat from the big deal?
– Unique title lists
– Subject collections
 Inclusion of e-books and other content
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What did (or didn’t) we achieve?
Publisher
AAAS
AIP
BMJ
BPS (now Wiley Blackwell)
IoPP
Nature
OUP
Sage
Springer
JISC Collections
No Price Rise
for 2011
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Price Rise
Below 5%
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Reflections on 2010

Increased interest from Members – EIRWG, RLUK, 94 Group and others
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Not just about the e-fee
– Negotiated on basis of the total expenditure
– Surprisingly some publishers HAD NOT looked at the overall impact of individual journal
price rises
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Time
– Longer to reach agreement – good practice to sit and wait
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Innovation
– Restructure the standard agreements
– Various options available to institutions
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Communication
– Worked hard to keep institutions informed and up to date and ask for support
– Some instances where out negotiating stance has been shared with publisher
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Consistency
– No agreements signed off without approval of JISC Collections SMT, or Board and EIRWG
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Looking ahead to 2012
 Two very big deals
– What do Institutions want?
 Not the only potential big deals around
 Changing nature of the UK consortium
 JISC Collections and its members
 Price and Licence negotiations
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Scale
Biggest deals for NESLi2
Largest Expenditure
Highest Usage
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Key issues from the survey
 Many institutions want to see options other than the Big Deal made
available, but would probably prefer to maintain the Big Deal if it was
affordable. This may reflect the fact that a large proportion of responses
come from institutions in bands C-F (76%)
 Some institutions would take a smaller collection if there was a
corresponding decrease in price
 There is little to choose between the two publishers in terms of the type of
agreement institutions would like to see.
 The issue of the subscription agents persists and needs to be solved if we
are to create an online-only closed consortium for both publishers
 There are no surprises in the elements respondents want negotiations to
concentrate on – overall price, followed by e-fee
 A number of these elements would be resolved if we created the online-only
closed consortium model
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Not the only big deals in 2012?
 Not just about the big two
– ACS
– OUP
– SAGE
– Taylor and Francis & Informa
• No current NESLi2 agreement
 Will be working with institutions from early 2011 on approach
to each publisher
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Changing nature of the UK consortium
 The emergence of SHEDL and other similar initiatives
 The role of the regional purchasing consortia and subscription agents
 A small number of institutions account for most expenditure with both
publishers
– RLUK members and their expectations
 The impact of the Browne Review and the Comprehensive Spending
Review
– Competition
– Different resource requirements
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What does this mean for JISC Collections and you?

One size fits all not acceptable
BUT don’t want to lose the benefits of bulk spend
– Support for RLUK from Sconul and other universities
– Structure agreements that bring advantages to publishers as well

A joined-up, coherent and well-communicated strategy
– Surveys of institutions
– Analysis of background information – usage statistics
– Make sure that all institutions and librarians are aware of the situation
– Wiley and Elsevier negotiations will start next week!
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Establish a strong coalition in support of our objectives
– Publishers will look to sidestep consortia if they feel it is possible and there isn’t the will to
support central negotiators
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There are no guarantees of success from acting collectively, but we will definitely fail if we don’t
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One final thing…
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These negotiations are focused entirely on price
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BUT we also negotiate a licence at the same time
– Standards
– Access Management
– Accessibility
– Pedagogic practice
– Needs of researchers – text mining
– Knowledge bases
– Post cancellation access
– Customer service
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What is the impact of trying to negotiate these at the same time as the price?
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THANK YOU
JISC Collections