William & Mary Libraries is committed to providing exceptional collections for research and teaching. The Libraries strive to support the evolving curricular and programmatic needs of the university, foster a broad and rigorous scholarship agenda, and develop collections that enable new and exciting research “aha” moments.

However, the university libraries’ collections budget is under enormous inflationary pressures due to large journal packages (“Big Deals”) that are unsustainable at their current pace. We are not alone. Universities and colleges worldwide are contending with the cost of the scholarly publishing industry and are increasingly taking action to signal their unwillingness to continue with business as usual. 

In 2021, the Virginia Research Libraries, of which W&M Libraries is a member, will be negotiating with Elsevier, a Big Deal scholarly publisher. The result of those negotiations will be made to the William & Mary community as soon as they are made clear, but efforts to make our research collections more affordable, sustainable, and equitable will not stop there. By helping scholars understand the true costs of paywalled scholarship, promoting affordable course materials like open textbooks, and supporting open access in research and education, we hope to truly abide by W&M’s values of curiosity, excellence, respect, and service.

W&M Libraries Support for Open Access & Publishing

• W&M ScholarWorks W&M's open access repository and publishing platform
• ORCID iD A persistent identifier that distinguishes you from other researchers and links your research outputs and activities