Global information services provider Clarivate, which owns data and analytics resource ProQuest as well as other library and education brands including Ex Libris and the Web of Science, announced on February 18 that it would pursue a “subscription-based access strategy for academia.” The approach, the company said in a press release, would “phase out one-time perpetual purchases of digital collections, print, and digital books for libraries” in 2025, requiring libraries to lease content rather than make permanent acquisitions. The announcement has destabilized the library and university press community at a time when higher education funding is uncertain.

“We’re now embarking on a new era in how institutions and their users access and consume content,” said Bar Veinstein, president of academia and government at Clarivate. Instead of purchasing material including e-books outright from Clarivate, library subscribers will renew their access to research materials, including e-books. Clarivate is also investing significantly in AI research assistants, which it is integrating with e-books and digital collections.

EBSCO Information Services, a provider of research databases and library technologies, responded by assuring customers that it will continue its perpetual access policy. On its website, EBSCO said it “reaffirms its unwavering commitment to supporting libraries with diverse acquisition needs, including perpetual access to e-books, print book fulfillment, and flexible acquisition models like Evidence-Based Acquisition (EBA) and Demand-Driven Acquisition (DDA).”

Jon Elwell, SVP of books at EBSCO, explained that every library manages its collection differently, and on a variety of budgets. At EBSCO, “we’re trying to make sure the libraries get what they need and, for the publishers, we’re trying to be the interface” that enables collection development, Elwell said. Flagship research institutions have the funding to build substantial collections, while such approaches as DDA can be affordable alternatives for small universities and community colleges.

Elwell doesn’t think a lease arrangement will be sustainable for the academic book ecosystem, arguing that collections won’t be as rich. “You lose that bibliodiversity that is really important to novel research,” he said. “Libraries have to be able to preserve the academic record.”

Rather than move to a leasing model, Elwell explained, EBSCO is “investing unbelievably heavily” in its new ordering system, Mosaic. “One of the biggest disappointments about the [Clarivate] news is that we had just finished the integration to have ProQuest Ebook Central available in Mosaic,” he observed. “We’re going to have to back that out.”

A ‘Transformative’ Announcement

Leasing models have existed in tandem with perpetual access approaches for years, said Leo Lo, president of the Association of College and Research Libraries, and his organization takes the position that both options should be available. Lo said the “affordability, flexibility, and predictable budgeting” of a lease can appeal to such institutions as K–12 schools and community colleges that lease digital textbooks. But “Clarivate’s move away from any ownership option forces libraries into a cycle of ongoing payments,” he explained, “intensifying concerns about collection stability and the ability to preserve scholarly materials for future use.”

Lo predicted that “as libraries adjust to leasing-only arrangements, they are likely to become more selective, prioritizing high-demand or core resources while potentially overlooking materials in emerging fields, niche subject areas, or interdisciplinary research.” He also thought the change could strain the relationship between librarians and publishers, hasten a shift to open-access initiatives, or “drive libraries to negotiate more aggressively” for favorable licensing terms.

Doug Way, dean of libraries at the University of Kentucky and chair of the advocacy and public policy committee of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), seconded Lo in pointing out that libraries “have alternative and equivalent products to choose from” in the current marketplace. He thinks “Clarivate’s leadership is miscalculating libraries’ appetite for more subscriptions.” Writing on social media, Way argued that many libraries are “favoring one-time purchases that are more cost-effective,” saying that institutions often find it “easier to make a $25,000 one-time purchase than to add a $3,000 annual subscription. Every institution I’ve worked at budgets for large one-time purchases. Clarivate eliminating that option won’t change the practice—it just removes their products from consideration.”

Andrew Pace, executive director of the ARL, echoed Way’s perspective. “Libraries rely on a competitive marketplace to give them options in developing their collections,” Pace said. One of those options is perpetual access, which “fulfills a research library’s responsibility to keep and preserve the scholarly record.” Pace noted that as early as 2013, ARL stated the importance of perpetual access for library collections; the organization recently published a guidebook “to empower librarians who license electronic resources,” and needs to ensure that information stays available.

Pace also expressed concern about how subscription-based models will impact not-for-profit university presses, which are already on tight budgets. “Libraries will need to decide whether this new business model is consistent with being good stewards of the resources with which they have been entrusted,” he said, and “ARL will continue to monitor the reactions of Clarivate’s customers, assess the impact on scholarly publishing and access, and do what it can to support its membership through these changes.” He pointed to a collaborative project by ARL, the Association of American Universities, and the Association of University Presses (AUPresses) known as TOME: Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem, which aims to sustain book-length projects through “institutionally funded faculty book subsidies” and open-access scholarly editions.

From an academic publishing perspective, Wendy Queen—a member of the board of the AUPresses—believes in having permanence in print and e-book collections. Queen recalled that when e-books became a viable option on academic platforms around 2012, the Mellon Foundation funded an exploratory process at the University of North Carolina–Charlotte to help publishers and librarians explore best practices for licensing and acquiring e-books.

“What came out of the Charlotte initiative were three fundamental commandments,” Queen said: investigators determined that e-book collections should have “unlimited simultaneous users, no DRM [digital rights management], and perpetual access. That to me is the crux, where the community came together.”

Clarivate’s announcement comes at a time when higher education sees such critical revenue streams as funding for research under dire threat, Queen said, and the news came as a shock. “From a platform perspective, the subscription might be appealing for the renewable revenue” for Clarivate, Queen said. “But what does this mean for nonprofit publishers? Any change in revenue can have such a profound impact on their program. This story goes from facts to fears really quickly.”