Friends: Please see: this report from the European Universities Association, released a few days ago: 2019 Big Deals Survey Report:: An Updated Mapping of Major Scholarly Publishing Contracts in Europe https://eua.eu/downloads/publications/2019%20big%20deals%20report.pdf *Key figures on Big Deals costs: * • At least 1.025 billion euros are spent overall, every year in electronic resources (including periodicals, databases, e-books) by 31 consortia surveyed in 30 European countries. • Periodicals alone account for 726 million euros per year across all consortia. 72% of these costs are borne from university budgets. • 475 million euros per year are spent in periodical Big Deal contracts with five of the largest publishers (Elsevier, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, Wiley, American Chemical Society). • Contracts with the largest five publishers are subject to an average annual cost increase of 3.6% *Recommendations: * • Despite their substantial contribution to Big Deals, universities are yet to exercise market power commensurate with their financial contributions. Universities and negotiating consortia need to be aware of this, of the causes of and ways to improve the situation. Part of the challenge may be due to the still confidential nature of most Big Deal contracts and to the low levels of information shared between consortia. Changes in national and European regulations, platforms to increase dialogue between negotiating consortia, more transparency and greater Big Deal contract disclosure are all important ways to improve leverage when it comes to negotiating Big Deals. • University leadership should be more involved in Big Deal negotiations, supported by experts in this area, such as the university librarians or national librarians. Given the importance of Big Deal negotiations for university budgets, they require both a political and a technical commitment. It will only be possible for universities to transform the current situation into a fairer and more competitive scholarly publishing system if there is more involvement from high-level leadership. • EUA recommends to negotiating consortia to use the ESAC Registry, in order to contribute to increased transparency and enable information sharing on Big Deal contracts across Europe. ----- In India several consortia (of HEIs and research councils) have entered into contracts with publishers, but do we have such detailed data for India? A few days ago Car Malamud had revealed data obtained through RTI on the huge sums spent on subscriptions to journals made by CSIR institutions and selected HEIs (see https://archive.org/details/CostOfKnowledge). Arun http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4398-4658 http://www.researcherid.com/rid/B-9925-2009