US universities review subscriptions to journal “package deals” as costs rise

US university libraries are cancelling “package deal” subscriptions—in which they buy a “bundle” of academic journals and online journal access from the publisher Elsevier—on the grounds that they are too expensive.

Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, recently announced that from 1 January 2004 it was stopping its subscription with Elsevier for a bundled package of journals. Instead, the library will purchase journals on a title by title basis.

The decision followed more than a year of negotiations between Harvard and other members of the Northeast Research Libraries Consortium and Elsevier to agree more flexible licensing terms for subscribing to journals. Elsevier offers its journals in what …