Seriously? A Series of Tips on Setting Up a Research Library (Part 13)

 
During my career as research librarian for various engineering firms, I had to negotiate once a year with vendors of bibliographic and technical databases. Each time I faced a vendor meeting, I braced myself.  
 
Each vendor has its own set of rules and conditions. And I often wished that someone, somewhere, had produced a systematic approach to the negotiation process.
 
And, voilá, I recently discovered that the University of California has done just that …
 
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Negotiating with scholarly journal publishers
A toolkit from the University of California
A North American framework for creating transformative change in the scholarly publishing industry based on initial insights from the University of California’s 2018-19 negotiations with Elsevier
Prepared by the UC Publisher Strategy and Negotiation Task Force
May 2019
The University of California’s (UC) 2018-19 journal contract negotiation with Elsevier has been widely followed. In response to ongoing demand for information, this negotiation toolkit was created to provide support and insight for institutions, particularly university librarians/directors and faculty in North America, interested in restructuring their publisher contracts for journal content.
This support testifies that there is a growing will to utilize publisher negotiations to sustainably reduce expenditures for academic journal subscriptions in the service of transforming journal publishing to open access.
Thanks to the efforts of open access pioneers around the world and, in particular, our European colleagues (including Projekt DEAL, the Bibsam Consortium, FinELib, Hungary’s Electronic Information Service National Programme, and more), UC has stood on the shoulders of giants, building upon existing knowledge and expertise to leverage publisher negotiations to effect a transition away from the standard subscription model and towards open access. With this toolkit, UC hopes to enable others to do the same, following UC President Janet Napolitano’s open access call to action.
source: https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/UCNegotiationToolkitforTransformativeAgreements_May2019.pdf
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The toolkit goes on to describe in detail the framework used to design an effective strategy for successful negotiation.
 
It finishes with a case study of the University of California’s development of and use of this framework.
 
The report includes a number of links to related documents that can be very helpful, as well.
 
Read this report if you are a librarian in charge of a technical library, or if you are a researcher or corporate leader interested in setting up resources that will help achieve meaningful research results.
 
TIP: This is the 13^th in a series of posts. Visit http://www.desulf.blogspot.com/search/label/TIPSTARTALIBRARY to read the other 12.
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Jean Steinhardt served as Librarian, Aramco Services, Engineering Division, for 13 years. He now heads Jean Steinhardt Consulting LLC, producing the same high quality research that he performed for Aramco.

Follow Jean’s blog at: http://desulf.blogspot.com/ for continuing tips on effective online research
Email Jean at letters@jeansteinhardt.com with questions on research, training, or anything else
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