Digital archival collections group purchasing scheme
Collectively lowering the cost of acquiring digital archival collections.
For enquiries contact:
About the scheme
Digital archival collections of primary source material are an important complement to traditional resources like journals and books, however limited budgets make the purchase of these often-expensive content resources difficult. This summary report (pdf) highlights issues relating to the costs of accessing digital archival collections.
The digital archival group purchasing scheme helps higher education (HE) libraries with the purchasing of digital collections and archives from publishers by making them more affordable. By digital archival collections, we mean static databases of texts, images, audio-visual material and data which libraries typically buy as one-off purchases (current subscriptions to journals and book collections are out of scope).
Group purchasing is a community-centred scheme based on the simple market principle: the more products that are purchased, the lower the price. The scheme ensures price transparency across all products on offer and eliminates annual platform/hosting fees.
Who is this scheme for?
The scheme is open to all higher education members as defined in the Jisc banding information.
Available collections
Over 90 products are on offer from the following publishers:
All products offered are licensed using the Jisc model license.
Orders must be placed through the license subscriptions manager website to confirm the order, with the final cumulative discount determined at the end of the financial year (July).
Benefits of the scheme
Following two successful pilots, a multi-year framework was created, increasing both the number of publishers involved and products on offer.
Key benefits include:
- Substantial savings – members have saved over £0.6m to date
- All titles are a one-off purchase with no recurrent platform/hosting fee
- Members of the scheme collectively help each other drive down the cost by leveraging the power of group purchasing
- Automatic 20% discount on all products offered through the scheme
- No need to negotiate prices – the fees have been Jisc banded to allow all HE members to participate
- A more efficient, coordinated and transparent approach to the acquisition of digital archival collections
- Members can easily compare products on offer
- A simplified and uniform approach (Jisc model license) to procuring and licensing collections from multiple publishers
For a complete overview of the scope and features of the group purchasing scheme please refer to the digital archival collections group purchasing scheme buyer's guide 2019-2020 (pdf).
Find out more
For more information contact Karen Colbron, digital content manager (karen.colbron@jisc.ac.uk).