Opinion - Big is still beautiful. The Big Deal is far from dead as long as it gives good value to institutions, says Steven Hall, journal sales and marketing director at Blackwell Publishing.

In October 2004 Jeff Gatten and Tom Sanville published an article in D-Lib Magazine entitled "An Orderly Retreat from the Big Deal - Is it Possible for Consortia?" At the time other commentators were also forecasting the imminent death of the Big Deal. I had just joined Blackwell, and I wondered if I'd come to bury the Big Deal, not to praise it.

One US consortium, OhioLink, did indeed conduct a reasonably orderly retreat from its Big Deal with Blackwell for 2005, reducing its access to Blackwell journals in return for a reduced increase in price. Libraries elsewhere also cut back on their commitments, if not to Blackwell's Big Deal, then to those of other publishers. A few libraries reverted to buying subscriptions alone. Was the sky falling?

Well, it might have been falling in Ohio, because of the state's severe economic problems and its legislature's response to them. Libraries in other US states also faced financial difficulties, but the death of the Big Deal is, to quote Mark Twain, an exaggeration.

The Big Deal flourishes, and does so because it provides extraordinarily good value to the academic community.

A recent study commissioned by the JISC analysed the use of journals within Big Deals by 16 UK higher ...