The OU Libraries reviewed Wiley journal commitments in 2018.  The Wiley review was one of several efforts the Libraries undertook to meet a 3% budget reduction mandate. Reviews such as this also serve to realign journal commitments based on community needs, usage data and content availability.  Collectively, publisher-based commitments such as the Libraries' Wiley commitment are known as "Big Deals" and they have driven much of OU and the academic library community's purchasing decisions for over two decades.  As of 2018 the University Libraries had not received an increase in its materials budget for nearly a decade, however, and could not continue to sustain these commitments.

The following methodology was used to generate data utilized in the Wiley journals project:

• Journal usage statistics for 2013-2017 were collected
• Current journal list prices were collected
• Cost per use was determined by taking current electronic-only list price for each journal and dividing it by usage
• All journals were ranked from high to low on average usage
• All journals were ranked from low to high on average cost per use
• Rankings were added together to provide a combined score, ordered lowest (best) to highest

In addition to the ranking described above, the following data points were also considered in developing a proposed maintained title list:

• Curricular and research needs
• Five year journal impact factor
• Interlibrary loan borrowing and lending data
• Review of journals by broad subject categories (arts & humanities, social sciences, STEM) to assure all categories receive a portion of funds committed
• Alternate availability of journals via full text databases or free delayed access