The second phase of this pilot terminated on 31 July and has built on the success of the previous one. In pilot two (FY17/18) there were 44 product sales over 27 product titles – an increase of 15 product sales from the first pilot in FY16/17. The number of institutions that purchased through the scheme rose to 22, from 20 in FY16/17. Across both pilots, institutions in Bands 5A/5B accounted for the majority of purchases. Participating institutions collectively benefitted from an average of 37% off the list price of products offered, totalling just over £330,000, in comparison to pilot one, which achieved savings of just over 25% for a total of £127,000.
Having scaled up from three to four publishers between pilot one and pilot two, Jisc is in the process of implementing a group purchasing framework agreement to further increase both the number of publishers involved and the products on offer. As with the pilot all products offered will be one-off purchase with no recurrent platform or hosting fee, therefore driving down the overall annual hosting fees payable by institutions The digital archival collections group purchasing scheme will run from November to July of each academic year guaranteeing a minimum saving of 20% off the list price of all products on offer, with the potential to increase the discount on price per publisher depending on uptake.
A new project page will shortly be launched with details of the publishers participating in the group purchasing scheme.
