Renewing a publisher's big deal against title-level usage evidence

Do not compare list prices per title - that figure (₹12,759 per title) is meaningless when 380 titles are never opened. Compare cost per download and cost per used title:

• Full package: ₹1.85 crore against the current download volume gives ₹68 per download and rising at 9% a year with no exit.
• Trimmed package: ₹1.15 crore for 900 titles. If the 90 high-use titles sit inside those 900 (check this title by title, do not assume), the university retains most of the 62% and the cost per download falls by roughly a third.

Recommendation: move to the trimmed package, ring-fence ₹6–8 lakh as a pay-per-view and interlibrary-loan fund for the residual demand, and hold ₹20 lakh in contingency. The bundling tactic on the fifteen 'core' titles must be tested, not accepted: verify whether they are reachable through a consortium, document delivery, author manuscripts deposited in repositories, or per-article purchase.

State the assumption explicitly in the minutes: the estimate holds only if the core titles migrate to the trimmed list. If the publisher refuses to confirm that in writing, the trimmed offer is a trap, and the fallback is the full package for one year with a negotiated exit clause.

Zero downloads is a measurement, not a verdict. Test it before discarding anything:

• Technical failure: incorrect or missing MARC records, a broken link resolver, the title not being indexed by the discovery layer, perpetual embargoes, or coverage only through an aggregator. Sample twenty zero-use titles and attempt to access each one; record the outcome.
• Discovery failure: check search logs for the title and the subject area. A journal nobody can find is not a journal nobody wants.
• Profile failure: some zero-use titles are simply outside the university's disciplines - those are the genuine cancellations.
• Rare but critical use: standards, review journals and data sources are consulted once or twice a year and matter enormously on those occasions. Value is not the same as volume.

For 'must-have', ask departments for syllabus citations and reading lists, then check whether those titles are in the 90-title core or are merely familiar names. Compare usage by department, not by the loudest voice at the committee. Record which titles are retained for non-usage reasons, and why - that protects the library when the same argument is raised next year.

• Perpetual access to the years paid for, either on the publisher's platform or through an escrow service such as LOCKSS, CLOCKSS or Portico, with the trigger conditions written down.
• Termination for convenience with 90 days' notice, pro-rata refund, and no penalty, so a budget cut does not become a multi-year liability.
• Interlibrary loan and course-pack rights under the licence, since these substitute for the cancellations being made.
• No confidentiality clause - the library must be free to disclose the price, otherwise consortium benchmarking is impossible.
• COUNTER 5.1 reports at title level, harvestable by SUSHI, delivered monthly rather than annually, so the next renewal decision rests on evidence rather than a single snapshot.
• A clear authorised-user definition covering remote and walk-in users, and an option to convert spend into an open-access publishing arrangement if the publisher offers one.

These are not aspirational; each maps to a risk visible in this year's data. Put them in the negotiation brief before the committee approves the spend, because a signed three-year licence removes all leverage.