Sustainable Scholarship

As stated in our Strategic Plan, UW Libraries works to advance research for the public good because we believe that “UW research attains its greatest impact on our most pressing global challenges when we advocate for open, public and emerging forms of scholarship.”

We strive for transparent and transformative models that create collaborative and long-term solutions for sustainable scholarship. Our values of sustainability, equity and user-centeredness shape our approach to publisher negotiations.

Responding to a changing landscape

Since the late 1990s, large publishers have marketed contracts for bundled access to their entire journal lists (a.k.a “Big Deals”) to research libraries. Over time,  publisher price increases have far exceeded the growth of library budgets, and ever-increasing percentages of collection budgets are now consumed by these inflexible contracts.

These Big Deals have received increasing attention from libraries coping with budget pressures as well as libraries trying to build towards an open scholarship ecosystem. Big Deals are financially unsustainable and have led numerous academic libraries around the world to reappraise their subscriptions and consider more flexible and strategic options for spending collection resources to meet the diverse needs of researchers and students.

The Libraries is working closely with campus partners to help inform and develop more sustainable publishing partnerships. In April 2022, The UW Faculty Senate voted to approve a Class C Resolution, sponsored by the Faculty Council on University Libraries, expressing its support for the UW Libraries’ Principles in Licensing Scholarly Resources.

As the Libraries navigate the changing landscape of scholarly communication, especially Big Deal subscriptions for academic journals, we will share information about collections needs, fiscal responsibility and the implications of contracts with Faculty and the UW Community.

For more information:

• UW Faculty Senate votes to support the UW Libraries’ Principles in Licensing Scholarly Resources (2022)
• For the public good: our values in a changing scholarly communication landscape (March 2019)

• UW Faculty Senate unanimously approves  Class C Resolution May 16, 2019

• SPARC Big Deal Knowledge Base: SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) is a global coalition of libraries and other organizations committed to making “Open” the default for research and education.  The Big Deal Knowledge Base  is an invaluable compilation of information about Big Deal trends, contracts, readings and cancellations.