  Discussions of the economics of scholarly communication are usually devoted
to Open Access, rising journal prices, publisher profits, and boycotts. That
ignores what seems a much more important development in this market.
Publishers, through the oft-reviled "Big Deal" packages, are providing much
greater and more egalitarian access to the journal literature, an approximation
to true Open Access. In the process they are also marginalizing libraries, and
obtaining a greater share of the resources going into scholarly communication.
This is enabling a continuation of publisher profits as well as of what for
decades has been called "unsustainable journal price escalation". It is also
inhibiting the spread of Open Access, and potentially leading to an oligopoly
of publishers controlling distribution through large-scale licensing.
  The "Big Deal" practices are worth studying for several general reasons. The
degree to which publishers succeed in diminishing the role of libraries may be
an indicator of the degree and speed at which universities transform
themselves. More importantly, these "Big Deals" appear to point the way to the
future of the whole economy, where progress is characterized by declining
privacy, increasing price discrimination, increasing opaqueness in pricing,
increasing reliance on low-paid or upaid work of others for profits, and
business models that depend on customer inertia.
