Access to scholarly journals – at what cost?

FinELib negotiations are ongoing and the big questions – price and open access -  are on the table (more information about our goals here). FinELib has presented the difficult financial situation in research organizations to publishers, but the renewal offers haven't so far reflected the severeness of the situation. 

To get a clear idea of why price is an essential issue in these negotiations, please see the graph below, which compares university index with the cost development of the five largest e-journal packages subscribed via FinELib (2011 = 100).  University index is a tool which is meant to keep universities’ basic funding up-to-date with inflation. However, since its introduction in 2011, the index has mainly been frozen by Finnish government, which means that budgets have been eaten by inflation for several years. At the same time, the costs for the five largest e-journal packages have increased by 25%. It has been getting harder and harder to accommodate these levels of price increases, which is why current negotiations are very important.