The economic toll of COVID-19 has proven wide-reaching over the last several months. It has not only led to businesses shutting down, high unemployment rates, and the cancellation of most public events, but the toll on education and academic institutions has been staggering. In April, the State University of New York (SUNY) was one such academic institution that was forced to re-evaluate its financial situation. The university, along with other institutions, announced that they were ending their subscription deal with Elsevier, a deal worth close to $9 million. While ending a deal with a publisher isn’t inherently breaking news, it is what SUNY is replacing their Elsevier subscription with that is the real headline.
After deciding not to renew their deal with Elsevier, SUNY used Unsub to figure out a new and cheaper pathway for their academic research needs. The software tool (which was known as Unpaywall Journals until May of this year) analyzes data from an institution’s library journal usage and then searches the web to see how many of the sources accessed by the institution are already available for free. Dubbed a “game changer” by numerous researchers and experts, Unsub has only gained more attention in this year due to Plan S and the growth of open access and open science pushing more and more articles beyond the paywall.
The service, which costs libraries $1,000 a month, has already proven fruitful for SUNY: It was announced that the institution saved close to $7 million in subscription fees by using Unsub. Administrators at SUNY were able to subscribe to a smaller number of journals in addition to the Elsevier articles that Unsub discovered to be available for free. If additional papers are needed, individual campuses can then subscribe to journals or purchase access to single manuscripts. With Unsub being used institution-wide, SUNY is now also reconsidering other subscription deals in their libraries.
As the pandemic continues to wreak financial havoc on academic institutions, Unsub will likely be adopted more and more by additional universities. It remains to be seen how larger publishers will respond to this new software. Has your academic institution used Unsub or a similar software to help with reducing subscription costs? If so, what type of results have you seen? Let us know in the comment section below!
