We’re expecting a new agreement for the Taylor and Francis journals to be ratified by CAUL members any day now.  On a positive note, there will be some good gains in content, in particular the new Medical Library that Taylor and Francis have introduced.  It has 226 journals and we currently have access to 56 of them.  The 6 year transition plan will see small reductions in costs for UC over time as the new model is based on EFTS/FTE rather than historical print spend.

Another change in the model is that the content will be lease access (opex).   A 20 year rolling archive will be applied during the licence term.  For example in 2017 access will be granted back to 1997, in 2018 access back to 1998 and so on.  We started subscribing to the Taylor and Francis package in 2010, so our understanding is that under the new model our perpetual entitlement to the Core titles will be 2010-2016.

There will be options to purchase perpetual access (10% extra charge) or to fill any gaps.  These options will be discussed at the Information Resources Working Group in due course.

The bigger picture is that we subscribe to our largest and most expensive packages through the CAUL or CONZUL consortia.  CAUL is negotiating with publishers to move away from historical spending patterns to clearer and more transparent pricing models that move with size (FTE) and nature (disciplines, research intensity) of the institution, both up and down.