This is part of a series of profiles detailing the experiences of institutions that have unbundled or canceled big deal journal contracts. The aim of the series is to provide insights, lessons learned, and inspiration to libraries to consider a similar move.
Summary
MIT leaders describe the experience of not renewing its largest journal contract as overwhelmingly positive. MIT has long tried to avoid vendor lock-in through big deal contracts and, in 2019, maintained individual title-by-title subscriptions to approximately 675 Elsevier titles. In 2020, they took the significant step of canceling the full Elsevier journals contract – all 675 titles – leaving users with immediate access to only pre-2020 backfile content. Since the cancellation, MIT Libraries estimates annual savings at more than 80% of its original spend. This move saves MIT approximately $2 million each year, and the Libraries provide alternative means of access that fulfills most article requests in minutes.
After laying the groundwork with faculty and university administrators, the transition has been relatively seamless with minimal push back from researchers. Most faculty have been supportive of the Libraries in taking a principled stand in line with MIT values and are finding alternative means of access to needed research without an Elsevier subscription. Four years out, the faculty who continue to be most challenged by lack of immediate access are in the life sciences.
The experience has highlighted the extraordinary difference between what MIT had been paying (with pricing based on historic spend) to subscribe to Elsevier journal content and what it actually costs the Libraries to provide users with read access to what they need. On the publishing side, MIT’s analysis demonstrates that there were no financial economies of scale offered by Elseiver’s read and publish proposal. While local institutional context varies, MIT librarians believe others could likely benefit from a similar move. They are interested in collaborating with others to make collective investments in open publishing using their savings.
Preparation
In 2019, the MIT Ad Hoc Task Force on Open Access recommended the development of a new framework with value-based principles to serve as the basis for institutional contract negotiations with publishers. The document, formally adopted in May 2020, spelled out the Institute’s commitment to open access and equity, and provided the Libraries with a critical new tool to use in negotiations.
There was a growing belief on campus that MIT’s history of supporting open learning, open source software, and open scholarship should also be reflected in its relationships with publishers. The new principles-based framework helped to ensure that decisions, such as journal contract negotiations, were firmly anchored in the institution’s values. This approach also provided concrete touchstones to assist individual authors and faculty in navigating publishing decisions in a similar fashion.
“For MIT to continue to pay millions of dollars to corporations that lock up the scholarship that comes out of our own campus was just inconsistent with MIT’s history of supporting open education and research,” said Chris Bourg, Director of Libraries at MIT.
The principles were crafted in consultation with the MIT Committee on the Library System, whose members proved to be key in garnering support. A draft of the document was shared in meetings with the councils of MIT’s five schools. Presentations were given jointly by a Libraries’ representative (typically Bourg or a member of the MIT scholarly communications team) and a faculty member from the committee (often Roger Levy, then-committee chair and a professor of brain and cognitive science).
“It was really important to have those champions among the faculty who could talk peer to peer,” Bourg said of the work to get campus buy-in for the principles and the changes that could result. Levy was an important example of someone who published in Elsevier journals but was supportive of the Libraries’ potentially canceling its contract with the publisher. In their presentation, the pair explained that canceling contracts with publishers, including Elsevier, who were not willing to adhere to MIT’s principles was a very real possibility.
In addition to answering questions at council meetings, the Libraries presented its principles to the MIT Dean’s group, which includes the provost and the school and college Deans, who also endorsed the Libraries’ approach.
The main questions from faculty centered on how they would be able to continue to access articles if subscriptions were canceled because the publisher was unwilling to meet MIT’s principles. To help understand the scope of what support would be necessary, MIT used Unsub to determine what proportion of the resources that MIT faculty typically used were already openly available. Bourg and her colleagues were then able to explain to faculty that MIT had perpetual access to back issues, and that newer articles that were not available openly could be obtained quickly and relatively inexpensively through interlibrary borrowing.
Many faculty were enthusiastically behind the principles-based approach, said Bourg, while a subset generally agreed with the principles but had concerns about potential changes in access. The year before, the University of California system canceled their Elsevier contract, which signaled MIT would not be alone and helped to allay some concerns at the time.
Decision, Outcomes, and Campus Response
During negotiations with Elsevier in 2020, MIT presented its principles to the publisher’s representatives as the basis for new contract negotiations. Once it was clear that the company would not agree to advancing MIT’s principles outlined in the Framework (such as allowing all authors to retain their copyright), the Libraries made the decision not to renew its contract, effective that July.
To support the MIT community once the Libraries went out of contract with Elsevier, scholarly communications librarians created a webpage to guide users through their options for continuing to access articles.
For the first several months, the approach focused on providing access through a combination of Interlibrary Loan (ILL) and openly available copies of articles, in addition to conversations with individual faculty about Elsevier’s business strategy and the MIT Framework. A handful of scholars (especially in the life sciences) expressed concerns about lack of immediate access, Bourg said, and when these concerns persisted, MIT decided to also contract with Reprints Desk, which enables on-demand access for a per-article charge.
“Turnaround times were and remain almost instant for nearly all requests,” Bourg said. Using this combination of non-subscription access strategies, 92% of all articles are delivered to faculty within 1 minute, and 97% within 1 hour.
“A lot of universities are hesitant to provide per-article access because of concerns that heavy use could result in costs that would exceed a standard big deal subscription or read and publish deal,” Bourg said. But that has not been the case at MIT. The Libraries has spent about $300,000 annually for commercial document delivery.
“We spent years building a coalition and getting support from deans, department heads, and provosts, and we had their backup from the start,” Bourg said. “While some scholars remain frustrated by the inconvenience of slightly slower access, we have worked very hard to reduce friction and inconvenience. We do not have any evidence of any decline in the quality of research and teaching at MIT.”
In 2022, Elsevier approached MIT with a request to re-engage in contract discussions. This time, Bourg was joined by an MIT contracts attorney in the negotiation, and once again, the Libraries’ asks were based on the MIT Framework for Publisher Contracts. MIT requested an outlining of the goods and services they would be paying for, some means of using the MIT contract to advance equity in the scholarly communications system, and a contract that allowed all MIT authors (including non-corresponding authors) to have their articles openly available in a repository without an embargo. However, the company returned to MIT with its standard read and publish contract proposal, and MIT once again decided to remain out of contract.
MIT librarians continue to collect data about what journals people are requesting and continue to listen to how faculty are adjusting. The Libraries expect that a limited number of MIT scholars may have purchased personal journal subscriptions. Most seem willing to take the small extra step to access an article through document delivery or other access mechanisms in order to stand by MIT values
MIT expects to maintain a similar level of savings over time while it remains out of contract. While demand for Reprints Desk may increase somewhat over time (as backfile access satisfies a lower percentage of demand), this need may be significantly offset by the increasing proportion of the literature that is publicly available—particularly once the 2022 OSTP Memo comes into full effect. It is also likely that any increased costs for on-demand read access will be less than the annual price increases MIT would have faced had it remained in its journal subscriptions contract.
Next Steps and Advice
Bourg said she’s proud of the work that so many people did and the logic senior leaders saw in not paying for content that researchers didn’t need. The cancellation is part of a broader conversation on campus about the future of scholarly communication that she hopes will continue.
Bourg’s advice for others: “Look at data about use, costs, and find allies across your campus who care about issues of equity and openness,” Bourg said. “This is both the right thing to do in terms of our values with public engagement and the right thing to do from an economic point of view.”
As the savings from remaining out of contract with Elsevier continue to accumulate, MIT is interested in collaborating with other libraries to reinvest these funds in community-controlled open publishing initiatives that better serve both their own campus and the academic community more broadly.
Bourg notes that “Everyone in the libraries contributed in some way – from direct involvement in negotiations, to vendor assessment, technical work, and workflow creation in implementing alternative access, to assisting patrons and answering questions, to gathering and analyzing data, making presentations, scheduling and coordinating meetings, and much much more. This was a true all library effort.”
Note: Those interested in investing funds saved from big deal contracts in open initiatives or in pursuing alternative access strategies to unbundle are invited to join the Strategic Priorities Working Group of SPARC’s Negotiation Community of Practice.