SCONUL, the professional association for academic and research libraries and Jisc, have negotiated a national agreement with not-for-profit Our Research.
The agreement will help individual SCONUL members in the UK to use Unsub, a data analysis and dashboard tool that enables libraries and consortia to independently assess the value of the journal subscriptions they hold with publishers.
The agreement will also allow universities to assess and share various scenarios of selecting journal titles. Modelling different scenarios gives university libraries greater insight into the value of their subscription packages, with the opportunity to share their outcomes with the Jisc consortium to enable greater oversight in support of national negotiation activities.
Jisc already uses a dashboard developed by Unsub, bringing together data on journal subscription fees at a national level. This data informs in their negotiations with publishers. Members will have access to selected views of this dashboard to understand the national picture.
The agreement has been arranged in response to sector demand following a consultation by SCONUL.
Unsub is currently used by more than 400 research libraries worldwide, with the latest subscribing UK institutions being the University of Cambridge and Lancaster University. However, the new partnership will allow Jisc to extend Unsub’s data-driven insights beyond these individual universities, to encompass the entire UK higher education sector. In doing so, Jisc will join other consortia that use Unsub, including the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (Canada), the Council of Australian University Librarians (Australia and New Zealand), the Joint University Librarians Advisory Committee (Hong Kong) and LYRASIS (USA), among others.
Tags: UK Assess Journal, Journal Agreement, Journal Publishing Agreement, Open Access Agreements
Click here to read the original press release.
