Improved offers from the ¡°big five¡± academic publishers may still prove too costly for many UK universities to accept, raising the prospect of thousands of scholars losing journal access, experts have warned.

New proposals by Elsevier, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, Wiley and Sage were sent to universities this week after their initial offers were decisively rejected by institutions in a sector-wide consultation run by Jisc, which is negotiating jointly with Universities UK on behalf of universities.

Universities are seeking price reductions of between 5 and 15 per cent on the ?112 million spent annually with these publishing houses, whose current deals expire at the end of 2025.

According to the consultation, which took and whose results were communicated at a town hall meeting co-hosted by Research Libraries UK (RLUK) and the Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL) on 20 October, none of the five offers presented by the publishers reached the levels of acceptance needed to proceed.

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It is understood that for Sage, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, the sector felt that only minor changes were required for them to be acceptable. However, offers from Elsevier and Springer Nature were deemed to require significant improvements around pricing.

Further negotiations with Jisc during September and October have led to improved offers from all five publishers,?with lower year-on-year cost rises over the course of the deals being proposed.

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However, these new offers could still prove too expensive for a ¡°significant minority¡± of UK universities, warned Ann Rossiter, SCONUL¡¯s chief executive.

¡°While these offers all show some improvement on initial positions, affordability remains very challenging for many institutions, particularly given the current funding climate in higher education,¡± said Rossiter.

¡°It¡¯s now going to be up to institutions to decide whether these are affordable,¡± she continued, adding: ¡°Our sense is that for a significant minority of our members, the answer is likely to be negative.¡±

Reflecting on the widespread cuts to library budgets seen across UK universities, Rossiter added that ¡°the offers don¡¯t reflect the wholesale change in business models that we all know will be required for long-term sustainability¡±.

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¡°Some university libraries have been asked to save hundreds of thousands of pounds from their budget. Relatively small concessions in some of these ¡®big five¡¯ deals won¡¯t make much difference on whether a library renews or cancels,¡± one university library head told ̽»¨ÊÓƵ.

Several university libraries have already indicated they are open to dropping deals with at least one of the publishers. In an update on 14 October, the University of Sheffield said its executive board had agreed to ¡°significantly reduce library spending on resources over a three-year period¡±.

¡°Depending on the publishers¡¯ offers, subscribing to all of these ¡®big deals¡¯ will potentially no longer be affordable and/or not align with our principles of cost constraint and value for money,¡± it added.

A fresh consultation on the new offers is expected to take about a month.

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David Prosser, executive director of RLUK, said some institutions appeared to have made up their minds already about renewing or not.

¡°Even with improved offers there are institutions that simply will not be able to afford all five of the big publishers in the current financial environment,¡± he said.

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¡°So the UK will almost certainly have less access overall than we do at the moment. But we won¡¯t know for sure until we have the results of the consultation.¡±

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com