· 11 countries from the Latin American region participated

· 82% of countries surveyed say their expectations about Big Deal negotiations have been transformed by the importance of the Open Access movement

· 79% of the reported amounts (a little more than USD 81 million) goes to large publishers. Elsevier consumes most of this money.

The First Regional Survey on Negotiation and Contracting of Information Resources 2019 showed that Latin America, according to the 11 reporting countries, spends a little more than USD 100 million on information resources (magazines, databases and electronic books), this data does not include payments for APC (Article Processing Charges) or the subscriptions contracted by universities and other institutions that demand this type of resources.

María Soledad Bravo-Marchant and Alberto Cabezas-Bullemore, authors of the study, detail in the report that this work seeks “(…) to quantify the expenditure that our countries allocated to magazine package subscriptions and the contracting and licensing mechanisms” (p.4).

This work dates back to the Second Meeting of Consortia of Latin America and the Caribbean, held in October 2018 in Santiago, Chile, where priority was given to seeking authorization from the European University Association to replicate the survey on Big Deals in the region. The investigation focuses on Big Deal type contracts with five large publishers: American Chemical Society, Elsevier, Springer-Nature, Taylor&Francis and Wiley.

The authors explain that Big Deal should be understood as the “(…) subscription to a list of hundreds of magazines, sometimes the entire list of a publisher, without the buyer being able to delete titles or put together a collection tailored to their needs or needs” (p.7).

For the authors, “the corollary is that we face a market failure that we must address with specific public policies because in the particular scientific communication market the “price” does not play, many times, the role that the economy has always assigned to it as a regulator of supply and demand” (p.6).

13 countries were invited to participate in the survey, but only 11 of them responded: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru and Uruguay. Mexico and Paraguay could not participate, the first due to the change of Government at the end of 2018 and the second because a response was not obtained.

Results

According to the research National States are the ones who mostly carry out Big Deal negotiations (46%), followed by University Consortiums and other organizations (36%).

55% of countries say they have a steering committee that oversees electronic document resources policies. These committees are usually made up of information science specialists and representatives of member organizations of the consortium or national access programs.

55% of countries comment that universities play some role in negotiation processes. In most cases (84%) the role is as the main negotiator or as the provider of resources (36%).

Regarding the negotiation processes, countries express certain concerns in the contracts. Three that stand out were detailed: cost reduction, the integrity of the collections that are contracted and cost control.

Another important fact is that 73% of the countries surveyed commented having a national open access policy or strategy. Even despite this “(…) 91% of the Big Deal contracts that this instrument registered do not include any clause on this aspect” (p.17).

However, a light emerges from all this data and that is that the countries surveyed say that in future negotiations they do want to include clauses on open access, especially aimed at the green route.

The above is in addition to the fact that 82% say that their expectations in the negotiation and contracting processes have changed taking into account the importance that the Open Access movement has acquired in recent years. It is mentioned, for example: “We have introduced the issue in the negotiation process, despite the reluctance of some publishers. We have managed to include green route clauses in some of the contracts (Springer, Wiley). We have seen marginal price reductions due to the transition of some titles to open access formats (OUP, Wiley, Annual Reviews, Elsevier with the SCOAP3 agreement)” (p.18).

Regarding the golden route, it was asked if there was a monitoring system in the national access programs to collect data on the funds destined to pay for publishing the rates called APC (Article Processing Charges). Only one of the countries claims to have this information. They were also asked if subscriptions and payments for publishing (APC) were included in the same contract, all countries responded no.

Regarding the numbers of Big Deal contracts, the countries report a total of 139 contracts, but this figure is based on the information held by the representatives who participated in the survey, so these are estimates. Yet, 73% of countries say there is no national-level organization responsible for collecting and processing contract information.

Huge expenses

“The eleven consortia surveyed report an approximate annual expenditure on electronic resources (journals, databases and electronic books) of USD 102,788,847. The amount excludes payments for APC and subscriptions contracted by universities and other institutions that demand this type of resources, so the reported amount underestimates the region’s expenditure” (p.25).

The origin of these funds comes mostly (55%) from universities and government agencies.

A total of 31 contracts are also reported with the five publishers mentioned above, which totals an amount of USD 81,343,894. This represents 79% of the amounts reported by the consortia in Big Deal contracts on a regional scale.

Regarding the participation of these publishing houses, 62.06% is taken by Elsevier, followed by Springer-Nature with 22.62%, the last places are occupied by Wiley (7.80%), Taylor&Francis (3.85%) and: American Chemical Society (3.68%). For countries, the first of these is the one that implies the greatest difficulty when negotiating an agreement.

Another aspect discussed was the issue of the duration of the contracts, a little more than 33% do not usually last one year, 26% last two years and only 13% last five years. For researchers: “The disparity speaks of a region that lives in a permanent process of contract negotiation with all the pressure that this implies for national and institutional budgets and for the teams in charge of these processes” (p.40).

Finally, the authors call for continuing to strengthen scientific communication in the region and point out efforts that have been made in recent years: “In the region there are relevant actors in scientific publishing such as the SciELO network, started in Brazil in 1997, and other initiatives that have been taking shape over time such as LA Reference, which brings together repositories from ten countries that operate with international standards in order to make the scientific production of the region visible.” (p.45).

Find the full study report here