# Welcome!
A better way to analyze your Big Deal
Unsub is a dashboard that helps you reevaluate your big deal, and understand your cancellation options.
This documentation is separated into four major sections oriented towards your learning goals:
* [Tutorials](/tutorials): Easy to follow step by step guides to getting started with Unsub. For example, [Create a package](/tutorials/create-a-package)
* [How-to guides](/how-to-guides): Guides on solving specific problems. For example, [Upload title prices](/how-to-guides/upload-title-prices)
* [Reference](/reference): Technical information about components of Unsub. For example, [Scenario parameters](/reference/scenarios/scenario-parameters)
* [How it works](/how-it-works): In depth articles geared towards understanding why. For example, [Where do the APC prices come from?](/how-it-works/where-do-the-apc-prices-come-from)
In addition, the [Troubleshooting](/troubleshooting) section contains answers to common questions about Unsub.
### Searching for documentation
You can full-text search the Unsub documentation - just click Search in the upper right of this page and type out a query.
### Linking to documentation
You can get the link to any page by copying the link in your browser. You can also get direct links to any headers. Go to the header of interest and hover your mouse over the far right side of the header and a link icon will appear. Click that link icon and the url will be copied to your clipboard.
### Unsub mailing lists
When your Unsub account is setup, the email address associated with the account does not automatically receive any emails with Unsub announcements.
We strongly recommend you sign up for these two google groups:
* [Unsub Announce](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/unsub-announce) for important data and user interface updates
* [Unsub Discuss](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/unsub-discuss) for user discussion
### Webinars and videos
Check out our [Webinars](/webinars) page for information about any upcoming webinars as well as links to webinar recordings. You can view a recording of the most recent training session [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dztEHqbmt58).
### Feedback
If you have spotted a bug or are encountering a technical challenge with Unsub, send a note to and mention Unsub somewhere in the subject line.
# Tutorials
These tutorials are aimed at folks at all levels of experience with Unsub.
For the beginners, we'll introduce you to Unsub, and help you get setup.
For those past the setup stage, we have tutorials to help you dive deeper and get more value from the product.
Our tutorials start with logging in to Unsub. After logging in you'll want to create a package. After creating a package you will create one or more scenarios within that package. Within a scenario you can then subscribe title by title and set scenario parameters. In the last scenarios tutorial we'll show you how to compare scenarios. The final tutorial is for the subset of Unsub users that have a consortial dashboard.
* [Logging in to Unsub](/tutorials/logging-in)
* [Create a package](/tutorials/create-a-package)
* [Create a scenario](/tutorials/create-and-work-with-scenarios)
* [Subscribing title by title](/tutorials/subscribing-title-by-title)
* [Set scenario parameters](/tutorials/set-scenario-parameters)
* [Comparing scenarios](/tutorials/comparing-scenarios)
* [Consortial dashboard](/tutorials/consortial-dashboard)
We have created a video explaining how to log in and get started
{% embed url="" %}
Please let us know if you have any feedback on these articles or have ideas for new articles at
# Logging in
{% hint style="warning" %}
You need to be a [paid subscriber](/reference/pricing/subscription-costs) before being able to login
{% endhint %}
### Login
Log in at [https://unsub.org](https://unsub.org/) using your email address associated with your account. Get in touch () if you're not sure or can't remember which email to use.
{% hint style="danger" %}
We strongly recommend [changing your password](/how-to-guides/change-your-password) after logging in.
{% endhint %}
# Create a package
{% hint style="warning" %}
Have you logged into your account yet? If not, [do that now](/tutorials/logging-in).
{% endhint %}
In this tutorial you will learn how to create a package in Unsub.
What is a package? A package is a container of sorts that holds your forecast scenarios for journals from one or more publishers. Think of a package as the thing you want to set up when you are starting to consider whether to renew a deal with a publisher/aggregator. An Unsub package is analogous to your subscription package for a publisher/aggregator.
## 1 Create a new package
Click on your institution’s name. The below image is for “A Demo University”. Look for the name of your institution. If there are multiple institutions, pick the one that you want to create a package for.
Once you’re in your institution, if no packages have been created you’ll just see the below button. To create your first package, click + **New package**.
You’ll get a popup window titled **Add subscription package**
Type in a Package display name. A package name is required to create a package.
Optionally, supply a Description for your package. The Description could contain any information - aim to help remind your colleagues and yourself later about important details about the package.
(You can change both the package name and description later.)
Then press OK, and you’ve now created your package!
After clicking **OK** you’ll land on the packages page where we list all of your packages. Remember, you can create as many packages as you want, and each package handles one publisher.
## 2 Setup your package
After the package is created it’s time to setup the package. There are four required steps, one strongly recommended step, and one optional step:
Required
* Upload COUNTER usage data
* Upload custom title price file
* Set your currency
* Set your big deal costs
Strongly recommended
* Upload post-termination access file
Optional
* Upload white list of titles
Below is a graphical guide to setup - we'll address scenario aspects in later tutorials, but this gives you a more complete picture of setup:
Make sure you have the files and information for the Required section. It would also be good to have the files available for the Recommended section, but if you do not have them you can come back to this tutorial later.
As this is a new package the screen should look like the below image (with the four Required data tabs with a red ❌ - indicating that they still need to be set by the user).
There is also one greyed out tab under recommended data (PTA), and one greyed out tab under optional data (Filter). You can’t access those tabs until you address the four required data tabs.
### 2.1 COUNTER usage
Usage data by journal for your institution is the most crucial piece of data for your Unsub forecast.
Click on COUNTER on the left hand side of the Setup screen.
You should see the below page, with a red alert indicating that you need to add your COUNTER data files. We support [COUNTER 4](https://www.projectcounter.org/code-of-practice-sections/archived-code-of-practice-release-4/) and [COUNTER 5](https://cop5.projectcounter.org/en/5.0.2/). For COUNTER 4 you'll need to upload one file (JR1), and for COUNTER 5 you'll need to upload three files (TR\_J2, TR\_J3, TR\_J4).
Next, upload your files: for each of JR1, TR\_J2, TR\_J3, TR\_J4, navigate to where your file is, select it, then press the up arrow to the right. The upload for the file will then begin.
As you upload files, the Unsub page will let you know if there were any problems with the uploaded files.
Check out [Upload COUNTER usage data](/how-to-guides/upload-counter-usage-data) for more details on uploading COUNTER usage data.
{% hint style="info" %}
While COUNTER data is uploading you can go to Pricelist, Currency, and Big Deal Costs tabs and set those values.
{% endhint %}
### 2.2 Title prices
Next click on **Pricelist** on the left-hand side. The screen should now show:
Note the red alert informs you how many journals have no price information, and also provides a file you can download which lists the journal with missing title prices.
You may not have your title prices for at this time. If not, click "View Missing Titles" on the red warning box. This will download a spreadsheet with the ISSNs, Titles, and an approximate sum of your COUNTER data for that title so that you know how important it is to you to make sure you get the price reflected in your Unsub dashboard.
With the missing titles spreadsheet, go to your Sales Representative for the publisher(s)/aggregator and ask for individual/a-la-carte title prices.
After getting title prices from your Sales Representative, see our [article on title prices](/how-to-guides/upload-title-prices) for the proper formatting.
Once you have your title pricelist file upload it by navigating to the file on your computer, then press the up arrow to the right.
### 2.3 Currency
Next, go to the Currency tab on the left hand side of the screen. Once you click on Currency you should see the following on your screen:
Select either USD or GBP. As the alert states in the image above, the currency selection determines which public pricelist will be used for title prices.
Check out [Set currency](/how-to-guides/set-currency) for more details on setting currency.
### 2.4 Big Deal costs
Next, click on Big Deal Costs on the left hand side of the screen. You should see the following on your screen:
Set your Big Deal annual cost and Big Deal annual cost increase.
Check out [Set Big Deal cost and cost increase](/how-to-guides/set-big-deal-costs) for more details on setting big deal costs.
### 2.5 Perpetual access
At this point you have filled out the four required data sections (COUNTER, Pricelist, Currency and Big Deal Costs). You can now exit package setup and [make a scenario](/tutorials/create-and-work-with-scenarios). However, for the purposes of this tutorial let us proceed with this one Recommended step. Or, you can go on to [Creating a scenario](/tutorials/create-and-work-with-scenarios) and come back to this later.
Click on **PTA** on the left-hand side of the screen. You should see on your screen:
The orange alert informs you that you should make an effort to upload your PTA data to have an accurate forecast.
You may not have your PTA data for the publisher at this time. If not, see tips on [gathering your PTA data](/how-to-guides/post-termination-access-data) and [how to format the data](/how-to-guides/upload-pta-data), then revisit this tutorial.
Once you have your PTA file upload it by navigating to the file on your computer, then press the up arrow to the right.
Check out [Upload PTA data](/how-to-guides/upload-pta-data) for instructions on PTA file format, and how to upload your PTA data.
### 2.6 Filter
You can optionally filter the titles that appear in all scenarios in your package to a "whitelist" of journals. If you change your mind after applying the filter you can delete the file from the setup page and you'll get back to your unfiltered dashboards.
Click on **Filter** on the left-hand side of the screen. You should see on your screen:
To find out more about journal filtering see our article [Upload journal filter](/how-to-guides/upload-journal-filter).
## What's Next?
Now that you’ve created a package, the next step is to [create one or more scenarios within the package](/tutorials/create-and-work-with-scenarios)
# Create a scenario
{% hint style="warning" %}
Have you created a package yet? If not go [do that now](/tutorials/create-a-package).
{% endhint %}
In this tutorial you will learn how to create and work with [scenarios](/reference/scenarios) in Unsub.
If you are not already in a package, click on the package you created in the [Create a package tutorial](/tutorials/create-a-package) (or any other package in your account), and you should see
From here, click on "**+ New scenario"**.
The pop up will ask you to name the scenario (default is “Untitled scenario”)
It will take a little while for the new scenario to be created. During scenario creation, you'll see a spinning circle like
Once it's complete you’ll be redirected to the new scenario, and you should see something generally like this. The details of every scenario vary widely depending on what you've done in your setup for the package, and your institution.
See also: [How do I add a new scenario](/how-to-guides/add-a-new-scenario)?
For a thorough explanation of Unsub scenarios see the [Scenarios](/reference/scenarios) reference page.
## **What's Next?**
Now that you’ve created a scenario, the next step is [Subscribing title by title](/tutorials/subscribing-title-by-title)
# Subscribing title by title
{% hint style="warning" %}
Have you created a scenario yet? If not go [do that now](/tutorials/create-and-work-with-scenarios).
{% endhint %}
Unsub helps you subscribe title by title using our advanced version of [**Cost Per Use** (CPU)](/reference/cost-per-use-cpu).
You can use our approach whether you:
* are planning to cancel a big deal and want to know what cost and access you'll have via ala carte subscriptions
* are curious about getting a better big deal and want a comparison point (big deal vs. no big deal w/ ala carte)
* already cancelled your big deal and want to get an accurate forecast of your ala carte subscriptions
We make it super easy to subscribe title by title using CPU. It's as easy as adding or subtracting one title at a time with two button clicks. Locate the area on your scenario with the - and + that says "Subscribed journals", and there should be a zero in between the - and +. When there are zero subscribed journals you should see all grey squares in your scenario - and no blue squares.
Click the + sign once. You have now subscribed to one journal, and you should now see one blue square. The blue square will be the left and lower-most square in the scenario.
You can continue to press the + button to add titles by CPU, or press the - button to remove titles by CPU.
## What's Next?
Now that you’ve learned how to subscribe title by title, the next step is to learn how to [Set scenario parameters](/tutorials/set-scenario-parameters)
# Set scenario parameters
{% hint style="warning" %}
Have you created a scenario yet? If not go [do that now](/tutorials/create-and-work-with-scenarios).
{% endhint %}
Click the **Parameters** tab
You should see a page of the nine parameters and their details
The first thing to notice is that you can toggle on or off the description (details) for each parameter.
By default the parameter details are shown.
There are nine different parameters you can configure. We encourage you to look into each of them. However, for this tutorial we'll explore just one of the parameters: Bronze OA.
Bronze OA is when a paper is made freely available on a publisher website without an open license - in which case the paper could be taken down at any time.
By default we include Bronze OA (Open Access) in our forecasts.
Looking at the Parameters tab, **Include Bronze OA** should look like this:
Now, click anywhere on the area of the parameter name, description, or the value (in this case **true**). You'll then get a popup like:
Click on the area on the popup with the blue switch and the text **Include Bronze OA**. That click should move the switch to the left and turn it white looking like:
Then click **Save**. You're done! Your scenario now will not include Bronze OA.
To make sure changing this parameter changed the scenario, let's compare screenshots of the scenario before and after changing the Bronze OA parameter. Although the entire scenario changes, let's focus on the Cost and Access bars on the left of the scenario.
**Include Bronze OA = true**
**Include Bronze OA = false**
Comparing the two images above, you can see that cost has changed, with higher ILL costs when Bronze OA is not included - more money needs to be spent on ILL to fulfill article requests. In addition, access has changed: open access fulfillment dropped from 35% when including Bronze OA to 30% when we didn't include Bronze OA.
For a description of each scenario parameter see our article on [Scenario parameters](/reference/scenarios/scenario-parameters).
## **What's Next?**
Now that you’ve created set scenario parameters, the next step is [Comparing Scenarios](/tutorials/comparing-scenarios)
# Comparing scenarios
{% hint style="warning" %}
Have you created a scenario yet? If not go [do that now](/tutorials/create-and-work-with-scenarios).
{% endhint %}
Within an Unsub package you can have as many scenarios as you like.
Comparing different scenarios is a powerful way to compare different choices about subscribed titles and scenario parameters. Remember, scenarios within a package share the same COUNTER, PTA and title price data - those data do not differ among scenarios within a package.
### Compare scenarios
Here, we'll compare two scenarios. If you haven't created a scenario yet, follow the [Create a scenario](/tutorials/create-and-work-with-scenarios) tutorial to create a scenario now.
After creating a scenario [make a copy of the scenario](/how-to-guides/copy-a-scenario).
On creating a copy of a scenario you are dropped into the copied scenario. In the copied scenario let's change one parameter setting then compare results.
Click on the Parameters tab in your copied scenario. You should now see a page of the nine parameters.
For this tutorial we'll change one of the Fulfillment sources parameters: **Include Bronze OA**
By default **Include Bronze OA** is **true**. Click on that parameter and click the blue button to turn it to false, then click Save.
You should now see a change in your forecast.
Now navigate to the package page with your two scenarios: the original scenario you created, and the copied scenario.
You should see something like:
In the above view you can easily see the difference in Cost and Access between your scenarios. In the example above the two scenarios are identical except for the **Include Bronze OA** parameter (true in "First Scenario", false in "Copy of First Scenario").
Cost is about $24,000 less and access 3% higher in "First Scenario" relative to "Copy of First Scenario".
As you add more scenarios you can compare cost and access across them all.
## **What's Next?**
The next step is learning about the Unsub [Consortial Dashboard](/tutorials/consortial-dashboard).
{% hint style="warning" %}
Note: Most Unsub users **DO NOT** have a consortial dashboard.
{% endhint %}
# Consortial dashboard
{% hint style="info" %}
Most Unsub users do not have a consortial dashboard - nothing is amiss if you don't see the consortial dashboard in your Unsub account (unless you've asked for one and don't see it yet). If you are a consortium and would like to have a consortial dashboard get in touch at
{% endhint %}
## 1 Find your consortium dashboard
If you have a consortium dashboard, when you login to Unsub you'll see a tab labeled **Consortia**. See below screenshot for an example.
## 2 Navigate to the consortial dashboard
After finding the **Consortia** click on the consortium listed on the tab. In this case it's called "Consortium for Testing".
You should then see a new page like the below screenshot:
In the above example there is one package (**Elsevier**). You can create as many consortial Unsub packages as you like.
On this page you can also see tabs for:
* Users: The users that have access to the consortial dashboard.
* ROR IDs: The ROR identifiers associated with this consortial dashboard. The ROR identifier here isn't used to link data together.
## 3 Consortial package view
From the listing of packages for your consortium click on any one of the packages to see what's inside the package.
{% hint style="info" %}
Unsub users can not currently create their new packages. Get in touch with us to create new packages:
{% endhint %}
The above screenshot shows what's inside a consortial package. Just as a normal Unsub dashboard, the consortial dashboard lists the scenarios you've created. You can create a new scenario - you can create as many scenarios as you like.
There's just one major difference here from the institutional Unsub dashboard: the number of institutions is listed under each scenario. You can include any subset of the institutions within your consortium in any scenario. That is, you can include different institutions in different scenarios and compare those scenarios to help the decision making process.
## 4 Consortial dashboard (scenario)
Clicking on the first scenario in the above screenshot we get to the Unsub dashboard.
The major difference here from the institutional Unsub dashboard is that there is a new tab for **Member Institutions**.
If you click on the Member Institutions tab you get a list of the institutions included in your consortial package.
## 5 Understanding the consortial dashboard
Using the consortial dashboard is just like using the institutional dashboard. You can see how changing parameters, and subscribing to titles a-la-carte changes your forecasts.
The values in the consortial dashboard are accumulated from the member institutions included in the **Member Institutions** tab, so whenever you change the institutions included your forecast will change.
Just like the normal institutional dashboard, you can look at the table view of all the titles in your dashboard, and you export the data.
Please get in touch if you have any questions about the consortial dashboard ().
# How-to guides
How-to guides take you through the steps required to solve a real-world problem.
For example, you may want to [change your password](/how-to-guides/change-your-password), or [upload title prices](/how-to-guides/upload-title-prices), or [copy a scenario](/how-to-guides/copy-a-scenario).
Please let us know if you have any feedback on these articles or have ideas for new articles at
# Change your password
You can change your password on your account page. To get there, click the person icon at the top right of your screen, then select "Your account,"
To change your password, click the pencil icon next to "Your password" and an edit box will appear:
like this:
If you've forgotten your password, you can reset it on the login page using the "Forgot password?" link:
Or if you are ever stuck, email us at with your email address and we'll reset it for you.
# Manage users
Add teammates in different roles to work with you on your Unsub profile.
You can give other people access to your Unsub account, with different permissions. To do this, go to your institution page, then click on the Users tab. Click "New group member":
Add the new group member's email address, and choose a permission level for them.
There are four permissions levels:
* **Admin**: Full permissions, including adding and deleting other users (even you). Only give people you trust Admin rights.
* **Collaborator:** Full permissions for your institution's account, *except* they can't add/delete other users or change other users' roles.
* **Viewer:** Read-only access to your institution's Unsub account.
* **Unaffiliated**: Can't access your institution's account at all.
We'll send this person an email with instructions on how to create their new account. Once they sign in, they'll automatically be granted access to your account, at the permissions level you chose.
### Deleting / Removing a user
There isn't currently an Unsub dashboard button for deleting/removing a user, but to achieve the result simply change the permission level for the user to **Unaffiliated.** After this change, they will no longer have access to your Unsub account.
# Change package name or description
You can add a package name and package description when you create a package. See our [Create a package](/tutorials/create-a-package) tutorial for more.
After a package is created, you can change your package name and package description in one of two places.
### An institution's list of packages
From your institution's list of packages, find the three vertical dots icon to the right of any package.
After clicking on either Edit package name or Edit description you'll get a popup that will have your current package name or description pre-filled. Edit the text, and when done click **Update**.
### Within a package
From within any package, find the tab called **Edit Details**.
Click the pencil to the right of Package name or Package description to get a popup that will have your current package name or description pre-filled. Edit the text, and when done click **Update**.
# Upload COUNTER usage data
Enable your custom forecasting model by uploading journal-level usage statistics
Before you can use Unsub to analyze and forecast your subscriptions, you'll need to upload your COUNTER data. Unsub uses this to customize its forecasting model to your particular institution.
To start, navigate to the Setup of your Package. The COUNTER tab will look like this:
We recommend using COUNTER 5 data for new packages, though COUNTER 4 is still supported.
If you have previously loaded COUNTER 4 data to a package, you can easily replace it with COUNTER 5 data by deleting the existing COUNTER 4 file (click on the Trash can to its right), then pick the COUNTER 5 radio button and uploading COUNTER 5 data as described below. All your Forecast Scenario calculations will automatically update to use the new data.
As you get your COUNTER files ready, keep this in mind:
* Unsub needs three COUNTER 5 files: a TR\_J2, TR\_J3, and TR\_J4 (COUNTER 4 needs a JR1)
* In our experience for COUNTER 5 the TR\_J3 and TR*J4 files are almost always available, but the* TR\_J2 file is sometimes not available or has no data rows in it. If you can not get a TR\_J2 file or the TR\_J2 file does not have any rows of data except the header rows you can download and use [this fake **TR\_J2** file](https://unsub-public.s3.amazonaws.com/TR_J2.csv). It should not affect your dashboard.
* Only these file formats are supported: .**csv, .xls,** and **.xlsx**
* There can be only one sheet in the file you upload
* Unsub expects the COUNTER data to cover 12 months of usage. This can be calendar year 2020, calendar year 2019 (if you think your usage patterns in 2020 were particularly unusual), or any other consecutive 12 month period.
* Files can not contain formulas or other non value contents. We don't currently handle files that have non-value contents like formulas.
Once you've got your COUNTER files, you're ready to start the uploads. Click the Paperclip, select your file, and then click the Up arrow button. Unsub will begin uploading and processing the files.
The upload and processing will take several minutes... some of these files are big! Once it is done, you'll see something like this:
You can click on the download arrows to the far right of each file to see what we have stored. If you'd like to replace this data later you can click the Trash can to the right of the row and then upload a new file — your scenario forecasts will automatically recalculate to use the new data.
Note that because COUNTER files include Open Access journals, and journals that have stopped publishing, not all of the journals in your COUNTER files will appear in your Forecast dashboards. Furthermore, if you are missing price data, those journals will be missing even if they are currently publishing and have COUNTER usage ([see here to correct this](/how-to-guides/upload-title-prices)).
# Set currency
Currently we support UK pounds sterling (GBP) and US dollars (USD).
To change your currency, go to the Package page (you can click its name in the top left corner of your screen), then view the Setup tab, and finally select the "Currency" menu option. Select the currency you want to use.
It's important to note that changing currency doesn't *convert* from one currency to another. If you select a new currency, don't forget to update costs you've already entered, replacing them with ones denominated in your new currency.
Specifically, you'll need to edit your package [Big Deal Cost](/how-to-guides/set-big-deal-costs) and scenario [ILL Transaction Cost parameter](/reference/scenarios/scenario-parameters#h_bb1971fa6a-1). You'll also need to [replace your custom pricelist](/how-to-guides/upload-title-prices) if you've already loaded one that had prices in your old currency.
We do plan to support other currencies, based on demand. If you've got a currency you'd like to see supported, please let us know!
# Set Big Deal costs
Change the default cost and increase % of your Big Deal so that it's correct for your institution
Before you can use Unsub you have to set your Big Deal cost and inflation rate. Unsub uses this information to calculate your savings under alternative subscription scenarios.
If you don't have a Big Deal, then use your current Package Price, or whatever amount it is that you have been paying for subscriptions.
You set this price in the Package setup — it is one of the required tabs on the left:
Click the pencil icons to set both the "Big Deal annual cost" and the "Big Deal annual cost increase." The "Big Deal 5-year annual cost" will then calculate automatically.
If you don't know your cost or inflation, you can use an estimated value.
# Upload PTA data
Add PTA with your own journal-level dates list
A key data source for Unsub is the Post-Termination Access dates of each journal — the range of content you'll still have access to, even after a cancellation. If you cancel a Big Deal, PTA to back content will become an important source of fulfillment, especially over the first few years.
Of course, this will vary, depending on the journal. In some fields (like math or philosophy), back content stays relevant for a long time, and so PTA is quite significant. In other (like biomed), readers are disproportionately reading brand-new articles, and so PTA doesn't impact post-cancellation fulfillment that much. The Unsub model accounts for all this, using a training set composed of millions of data points from thousands of libraries, and customized it to your institution using your COUNTER data.
**By default, the model assumes that you have no PTA rights to any of the journals in your COUNTER data**. However, this is probably not the case, and so **likely underestimates your post-cancellation access**. You can upload a list of your actual PTA date ranges by journal, and Unsub will recalculate your forecasts using that data.
Here's how.
First, navigate to the package you're interested in, click the Setup tab, and scroll to the PTA section:
As you can see, there is a warning that you are missing PTA data.
Let's fix that by uploading a custom file. The file is pretty simple, just a spreadsheet with three columns: **ISSN**, **Start Data**, and **End Date**. A few other tips:
* For the dates, we prefer an [ISO 8601](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601) format like this: **YYYY-MM-DD**. However, we make our best guess at dates in other formats as well, and they generally work.
* If a journal's PTA is ongoing, leave the End Date blank.
Here's an example:
To upload your file, click the Paperclip, then find your file and select it, then click the Upload arrow. You'll wait a minute or two while Unsub starts to upload and process the file. Then when it's done, you'll see something like this:
Looking at the "Your PTA file" section, we can see there are now 373 journals where the model will using our custom date ranges. You can click on the download arrow to the far right to view the journals and the ranges being used.
If you'd like to replace this data later you can click the Trash can to the right of the row and then upload a new file — your scenario forecasts will automatically recalculate to use the new data.
### A few things to be aware of related to PTA in Unsub
* Unsub forecasts use PTA for roughly the most recent 10 years, starting from the current year minus 10 (so in 2026, the earliest year used is 2016). **This window rolls forward each year**, so the earliest year will change over time. If you have PTA start dates earlier than that, there's no need to edit your file — older start dates are simply treated as the start of the window. This is because content older than \~10 years contributes very little to post-cancellation usage, so it doesn't meaningfully change the forecast.
* For PTA end dates that are ongoing (blank) or in the current year or later, the end date shown will be the previous complete year (current year minus one). For example, in 2026 a blank end date, or an end date of 2026 or later, will display as 2025.
\\
# Upload journal filter
Filter journals that appear in your dashboard
Any Unsub dashboard supports journals from any publisher. However, Unsub started off with each dashboard being concerned with one publisher. Thus, you may be used to, for example, uploading COUNTER reports for Elsevier and be expecting to see only Elsevier journals in your dashboard.
As we now support all publishers - including a mix of publishers - we no longer filter titles in a dashboard by publisher. All titles are included from COUNTER report you upload as long as they do not fall under one or more of [these three reasons](/troubleshooting/why-dont-i-see-a-certain-title-in-my-dashboard).
To address the lack of filtering by publisher, we now support user supplied title filtering. Filtering titles is **optional**.
### Filtering titles
First, navigate to the package you're interested in, click the Setup tab, and scroll to the Filter section:
As you can see, there is a warning that you are missing data.
If you upload a KBART file, make sure to edit the file to only the ISSNs you want to whitelist.
Let's fix that by uploading a custom file. The file is pretty simple, just a spreadsheet with one column: **ISSN**.
Here's an example:
To upload your file, click the Paperclip, then find your file and select it, then click the Upload arrow. You'll wait a minute or two while Unsub starts to upload and process the file. Then when it's done, you'll see something like this:
We can see there were 250 rows of useful data. You can click on the download arrow to the far right to view the journals used to filter the titles in your your dashboards.
If you'd like to replace this data later you can click the Trash can to the right of the row and then upload a new file — your scenario forecasts will automatically recalculate to use the new data.
Upon returning to any scenario within the package you should now see a blue message "Journal Whitelist (some number)" in the upper right hand corner. For example:
You can click on the blue "Journal Whitelist" text to get to this documentation page.
Importantly, the titles that you see in your dashboard may not match exactly to the titles uploaded in the Journal Filter setup step. These are some of the situations you could encounter after filtering:
* The number of titles in your scenario is unchanged. This could be because the titles you filtered to matched exactly the titles already in your dashboard.
* The number of titles in your scenario has gone down but you still have some titles. This should be the most common case.
* There are no titles in your dashboard. This could happen if you filter by ISSNs that are valid, but do match any titles in your dashboard.
If you have a different situation, or any questions about any of this please get in touch at
# Upload title prices
Modify pricing data with your own journal-level pricelist
A key data source for Unsub is the title-by-title price for each journal — the actual real-world cost you'll pay, if you choose to subscribe to that journal individually outside any Big Deal. For any given journal, there are two sources for the title-by-title price:
1. **Custom uploaded price:** You can upload a simple spreadsheet with custom prices for each journal. Any custom prices you upload will be interpreted in the currency you have chosen for your package.
2. **No price:** If you didn't upload a list price for a journal, then the price is unknown. In that case, this journal will be *omitted from forecasting,* because we don't know how they will affect the financial side of the model.
{% hint style="info" %}
Public list price: We used to provide public list prices. We no longer provide them. See the [Getting Title Prices](/how-to-guides/getting-title-prices) page for help.
{% endhint %}
You can see the source of price data for each journal by going to your institution page, clicking the package you are interested in, opening the Setup tab, and then clicking the "Pricelist" section.
If you don't have any title prices uploaded, you will see one of two screens:
* COUNTER reports **have not been uploaded**. The message on the pricelist page states simply that pricelist data is required.
* COUNTER reports **have been uploaded**. The message states that the pricelist data is required, and tells you how many titles are missing price information.
If you click on "View Missing Titles", you will download a spreadsheet with the ISSNs, Titles, and an approximate sum of your COUNTER data for that title (column named "counter\_total") so that you know how important it is to you to make sure you get the price reflected in your Unsub dashboard. The "counter\_total" column includes only data from your COUNTER reports; it does not include citations or authorships data that you see in the Unsub dashboard. The file looks like:
Once you have your price data available, the format needed for Unsub is really simple. It's just two columns: **ISSN** and **Price**. You include a row for every journal where you have a custom price to set. The prices are interpreted in the Currency you set in your Package Setup (currency symbols are ignored). The file needs to be in .csv, .xlsx, or .xls format with just one sheet. Files can not contain formulas or other non value contents. We don't currently handle files that have non-value contents like formulas. Here's an example:
{% hint style="danger" %}
Do not use a thousands comma or period separator in the Price column
{% endhint %}
To upload, just click the Upload button, then click the Paperclip, find your file and select it, then click the Upload arrow. You'll wait a minute or two while Unsub starts to upload and process the file. Then when it's done, you'll see something like this:
If you want to see the prices you have uploaded you can click the download button on the far right of the file row. If you'd like to replace your Custom journal pricelist, click the garbage can to the right of the file row and then upload your new file.
Note that the red alert has given way to an orange alert - indicating that required data has been uploaded but that there are still missing prices.
If you do happen to get all title prices you will see something like the screen below with a green alert and check mark:
{% hint style="info" %}
Unsub only supports pricing at the single-journal level. For more on how to address mini-bundle pricing see [this article](/how-to-guides/mini-bundle-pricing).
{% endhint %}
# Mini bundle pricing
Some publishers advertise a special price if you buy a few titles bundled together (and they often assign this "mini bundle" its own ISSN).
Currently Unsub only supports pricing at the single-journal level. We have a few suggestions on how to handle "mini bundles", though not any perfect solution yet unfortunately.
What some Unsub users have done is remove the non-primary bundled titles (so all the journals except for its "main" title) from their COUNTER files (like, delete those rows, then re-upload), so they don't show up in their forecasts, and then if it came to subscribing you'd get them for "free" from the publisher if the main journal is enough to warrant subscribing.
A different workaround others have done is to add the usage together for the bundles in their COUNTER file (you only have to modify the "total", we ignore the months columns) so that usage of the other titles are included in the main title.
You could make the price be $0 for "free with a bundle", but then its Cost Per Use will be $0 and any way of subscribing by most cost effective journal first will pick it, which could get confusing.
# Add a new scenario
You can add a new Scenario to your Dashboard (so that you can compare different combinations of Parameters and Subscriptions across different scenarios) in one of two ways: Add or Copy.
To Add a scenario, click "+ New Scenario" on your scenarios list page:
If you already have a scenario we recommend [Copying a scenario](/how-to-guides/copy-a-scenario) instead of adding a new one.
# Copy a scenario
If you already have a scenario, we recommend Copying a scenario instead of [Adding a new one](/how-to-guides/add-a-new-scenario) — a copied scenario copies all of the Parameter and Scenario settings so that you don't have to redo that work. To copy a scenario, on the Scenario page click the Copy icon to the right of the scenario name:
You will then be prompted to name your new scenario.
Alternatively, you can copy a scenario from the package page listing all of your scenarios within the package. From that page, click on the three vertical dots on the right-hand side of the scenario you want to copy, then click "Make a copy"
When the scenario is created you are dropped into the copied scenario - not the original scenario.
# Getting Title Prices
All about finding title prices
[A title price is required for a journal to appear in your Unsub dashboard](/troubleshooting/why-dont-i-see-a-certain-title-in-my-dashboard).
We used to provide publicly available title prices when we supported the big five publishers (Elsevier, Wiley, Springer Nature, SAGE, and Taylor & Francis). This eased the setup process for Unsub because we already had some title prices. However, collecting title prices for **ALL** publishers is not feasible.
As before we still recommend that you get in touch with your publisher contact and ask for a pricelist for the ISSNs in your dashboard. We have not heard of Unsub users having problems getting title prices from their publisher contacts.
As an alternative - or in addition - to contacting your publisher, you can use public title prices. These may or my not be different from the specific price the publisher charges you.
The following is non-comprehensive list of places to find public title prices:
* Elsevier:
* Wiley:
* Springer Nature:
* SAGE:
* Taylor & Francis:
# Post-termination access data
Tips on how and where to get your PTA data
Tracking down PTA can be a time consuming task. For some tips/guidance on this topic here are some resources:
* Bremer, C. & Lavallée-Funston. (2022). It’s (perpetually) Complicated: Tracking Perpetual Access Rights from Consortial License Agreements. Camp ER\&L 2022 ([slides](https://www.crkn-rcdr.ca/sites/crkn/files/2022-04/ER%26L2022_KBESC_PATrackingProject_2022-03-10_sharing_0.pptx))
* Carter, S., & Toyota-Kindler, Y. (2021). Assessing e-journal post-cancellation access. *Against the Grain*, *31*(4), 12. [pdf](https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=8412\&context=atg)
* Donahoo, N. S., & Aguilera, A. (2019). An Ongoing Treasure Hunt: One Library’s Practical Experiences Documenting Post-Cancellation Perpetual Access. The Serials Librarian, 76(1-4), 83-85.
* Bazeley, J. (2018). Report of the ALCTS Collection Management and E-Resources Interest Group Meeting. ALA Annual Conference, Chicago, June 2017. Technical Services Quarterly, 35(3), 291–296.
* Bulock, C. (2015). Techniques for Tracking Perpetual Access. The Serials Librarian, 68(1-4), 290-298.
* Stemper, J., & Barribeau, S. (2013). Perpetual Access to Electronic Journals. *Library Resources & Technical Services*, *50*(2), 91-109.
# Select journals
In the upper right of your Unsub dashboard (scenario) you will see a search/select box.
You can use this feature of Unsub for a few use cases:
1. Find journals in your dashboard matching a comma-separated list of ISSNs, e.g, "1878-8750,1876-2018,2468-6964". All of your favorite spreadsheet editors have a way to generate a comma-separated list of cell contents, including ISSNs. This use case will be especially useful when you are determining some set of titles you want to subscribe to in Unsub based on variables Unsub does not have, e.g., faculty survey data.
2. Find journals in your dashboard matching a text string, e.g., "science". This searches journal titles only
When you have journals selected due to text you've entered (see image below):
* The grey text below the box will display the total number of journals selected (e.g., "30 selected").
* In histogram view, the journals selected in the histogram will retain their original colors, while the unselected journals will fade to a light grey - making the selected journals easier to pick out
* In table view, the table will be filtered to only the journals selected
The two icons to the right of the search/select box will be covered in the next article on [bulk subscribe/unsubscribe](/how-to-guides/bulk-subscribe-unsubscribe).
If your search text finds no matches in histogram view no titles (grey boxes) will be highlighted.
If your search text finds no matches in table view you will see an alert like that below - you can click on the small circled question mark to get to this documentation page.
# Bulk subscribe/unsubscribe
{% hint style="info" %}
For an overview of journal search/select check out [this page](/how-to-guides/select-journals).
{% endhint %}
We covered subscribing title by title in the tutorial [Subscribing title by title](/tutorials/subscribing-title-by-title), which centers around subscribing by our calculation of Cost Per Use.
However, sometimes you want to subscribe to specific journals for whatever criteria you have that are not related to Unsub's [Cost Per Use](/reference/cost-per-use-cpu). For example, you may have done a faculty survey which created a certain set of titles you want to include in your subscribed titles.
To subscribe/unsubscribe in bulk, go to the upper right of your Unsub dashboard.
When there are no journals selected (see image below):
* The subscribe and unsubscribe buttons are disabled and greyed out.
* You can not click on them and you don't get a tooltip when hovering over them.
When you do have journals selected due to text you've entered (see image below):
* A grey text below the box will display the number of journals selected (e.g., "30 selected"). This is the total number selected, combining any that you can subscribe to and any to which you can unsubscribe
* The subscribe and unsubscribe buttons will become blue and grey, respectively, if there are any journals to which you can subscribe or unsubscribe.
You'll also see a tooltip if you hover over the subscribe or unsubscribe buttons:
After selecting the titles you're looking for, you can click the subscribe or unsubscribe icons. After clicking the icons you should see a change in your subscribed titles, whether it be adding or subtracting subscriptions.
Here's a screen recording putting it all together:
You can delete your search text by clicking the X icon in the far right of the text box.
# APC Report
The APC report tab can be found at your institution.
Click the Download button to download a spreadsheet.
This report contains estimates of your institution's APC spend on gold and hybrid open-access articles. Articles and their APC prices come from OpenAlex, so the report now covers a wide range of publishers rather than only the largest few.
When OpenAlex identifies your institution as the corresponding institution on an article, we attribute the full APC to your institution. When corresponding-institution information is not available for an article, we fall back to an estimate that assumes each author on the article had an equal likelihood of being the corresponding author.
To find out more about where we get APCs, see [Where do the APC prices come from?](/how-it-works/where-do-the-apc-prices-come-from)
To find out how calculate our estimates of spend in this report, see [How do we calculate your OA Publish spend?](/how-it-works/how-do-we-calculate-your-oa-publish-spend)
# Excluded Titles report
Your Unsub dashboard may not include all the titles you uploaded in your COUNTER reports files. See our [Why don't I see a certain title in my dashboard?](/troubleshooting/why-dont-i-see-a-certain-title-in-my-dashboard) page, which details the four major reasons why a title could be excluded.
In your package Setup tab, under the **Diagnostic data** section, you will find an Excluded Titles page which allows you to download a spreadsheet.
In the spreadsheet there are two informational columns (issn\_l, publisher), and four columns for the four reasons a title could be excluded from a scenario. The columns are:
* **issn\_l**: The linking ISSN, or ISSN-L
* **publisher**: The publisher, according to [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/)
* **gold\_oa**: `True` if OpenAlex thinks the journal is Gold Open Access (OA), otherwise `False`. We can not include titles that are Gold OA because there is no subscription access route, and we currently require that
* **not\_currently\_publishing**: `True` if we think the journal is no longer publishing, otherwise `False`. This determination is based on data from OpenAlex
* **price\_not\_available**: `True` if there is not title price, otherwise `False`. You can fix this by [uploading title prices](/how-to-guides/upload-title-prices). We require title prices for a title to be included in the dashboard
* **filtered\_out**: `True` if you filtered the title out using the optional Journal Filter setup step, otherwise `False`. Read the docs for [journal filter](/how-to-guides/upload-journal-filter)
Here's an example of four rows of the report you'll download:
| issn\_l | publisher | gold\_oa | not\_currently\_publishing | price\_not\_available | filtered\_out |
| --------- | --------- | -------- | -------------------------- | --------------------- | ------------- |
| 2053-9711 | OUP | True | False | False | False |
| 0007-0912 | Elsevier | False | False | True | False |
| 1473-6691 | SAGE | False | False | True | False |
| 0024-6093 | Wiley | False | True | False | False |
A few notes about the data:
* With the four columns in the report, you can use a spreadsheet filter tool to filter to all the titles that are excluded for the same reason (e.g. missing title prices), and then look into those titles.
* A title can be excluded for more than one reason. For example, it can be Gold OA and missing a title price.
* For some titles you can change something so it appears in your dashboard. For example, if a title price is missing you can get a title price; if you've filtered the title out you can remove the title from your filtered titles upload. However, if the title is Gold OA or is no longer publishing, nothing can be done to make it appear in your dashboard.
* Check out the [OpenAlex documentation](https://docs.openalex.org/) for more about OpenAlex.
After looking at the report [email us (support@openalex.org)](mailto:support@openalex.org) if you think any of the titles should be included in your scenarios for this package, and we'll have a look.
# Reference
This section has articles with more technically oriented content. That is, each article explains some topic or concept in depth, getting "into the weeds".
For example, there's an article on all the details of the [export file](/reference/data-export), and an article on [cost per use](/reference/cost-per-use-cpu).
Please let us know if you have any feedback on these articles or have ideas for new articles at
# Pricing
# Subscription costs
The Unsub dashboard requires a subscription.
Although our code is [open source](https://github.com/ourresearch/get-unsub), it costs money for us to maintain and operate the service; the subscription fee offsets that cost, keeping [our nonprofit](https://ourresearch.org/) sustainable.
Our support model is based on the size of your library's current annual budget for materials (print and electronic serials, books, and so forth).
Here are the pricing tiers:
| **Library materials budget** (USD) | **Cost** (USD) |
| ---------------------------------- | -------------- |
| $0 - 500,000 | $500 |
| $500,000 - 1,000,000 | $1,000 |
| $1,000,000 - 1,500,000 | $1,500 |
| $1,500,000 - 2,000,000 | $2,000 |
| $2,000,000 - 2,500,000 | $2,500 |
| $2,500,000 and above | $3,000 |
If you're not able to determine your library materials budget, use your best estimate. If you're on the border between two tiers, feel free to pick the lower one.
If your budget isn't in US Dollars, convert it from your local currency into USD and then use the chart above as usual. Some folks like to use the average exchange rate over the last year, while others prefer to use today's rate; either is fine by us.
If you're looking to get a quote for a consortium, rather than a single institution, see the [Consortium Dashboard](/reference/pricing/consortium-dashboard) page.
# Consortium Dashboard
Here's how Unsub works for library consortia, including setup and pricing
Unsub was first released in November 2019. It was obviously a much-needed product because in its first year it has been used by hundreds of universities to better understand their subscription data and negotiate with publishers.
\
If you haven't already, we strongly recommend that you watch the [guided tour of Unsub](https://vimeo.com/420183913) video to understand the Unsub approach.
\
We've found library consortia are particularly interested in Unsub. Many consortia are using it in negotations right now. Most of those are confidential, but one group -- the State University of New York -- has publicly said that Unsub helped them save millions of dollars per year in their Elsevier deal across their 60 universities (see [this news article in *Science*)](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/tool-saving-universities-millions-dollars-journal-subscriptions).
\
Unsub for Consortia is just like the standard Unsub product -- each of the consortium members has its own dashboard -- but it adds an **extra dashboard view** that shows all the data for all the consortium members **summed together**. This extra dashboard view looks almost identical to the dashboard for an individual university, but all the numbers (downloads, citations, authorships) are sums across all the member universities.
\
If you have a lot of universities and want to group together just a few of them (like just the members with medical schools, or just the very small schools) to understand the sums of just that group, you can also do that.\\
This top-level-view consortium data helps you understand the cost and fulfillment possibilities of various subscription paths for the consortium as a whole. Specifically, it can help you negotiate hard if you decide to stay with your Big Deal, or it can help you decide which journals you should subscribe to if you decide to save money by leaving your Big Deal.
In terms of **pricing**, the price for setting up a consortium in Unsub is just the price of each of its members subscribing -- we add the Consortium dashboard in for free. So if you have 10 members, look up the materials budget (converted roughly into US dollars) for each of the 10 members in the table on [our purchase page](https://unsub.org/purchase), and then sum their Unsub Yearly Costs together to get how much it would cost for your whole consortium to subscribe to Unsub, minus a 10% consortium discount. For the consortium customers we've had so far, in some cases the consortium organization pays this whole cost from their own funds and in other cases the consortium passes on the cost to each of its members, we are good either way.
In terms of **setup**, most consortia ask their consortium members to upload their own COUNTER data to Unsub. In a few cases, the consortium already has all the COUNTER data centralized and they just it to us and we fill it in to the member's Unsub dashboards behind the scenes. COUNTER data is all that is required to get a basic dashboard going, though you can also upload a spreadsheet of detailed PTA (Post-Termination Access) dates to get more accurate forecasts.
Unsub currently supports analysis of journals published by Elsevier, Wiley, Springer Nature, SAGE, and Taylor & Francis. All publishers by mid-2021. The single Unsub fee lets you use the system for all publishers; there is no extra fee per publisher.
We think that Unsub would be very helpful to your members and to you as a consortium! If you are interested, please email us at
# Scenarios
Get your bearings on the scenario page
{% hint style="info" %}
Looking for scenario parameters? See [this article](/reference/scenarios/scenario-parameters)
{% endhint %}
# High level overview
Get the lay of the land for Unsub scenarios
Scenario parameters let you customize a Scenario to your institution's environment and to experiment with different assumptions about the future.
Scenario parameters are specific to each scenario. That is, if you change scenario parameters in "Scenario A", those parameters will now be different from those in "Scenario B".
The exception is if you [copy a scenario](/how-to-guides/copy-a-scenario). A copied scenario copies all of the scenario parameter settings.
# Scenario Parameters
Unsub provides a number of Parameters to let you customize a Scenario to your institution's environment and to experiment with different assumptions about the future.
Parameter values are stored as part of the scenario. Parameter values can be changed using the "Parameters" menu. You can make a new scenario that has the same parameter settings as a current scenario using Copy button to the right of the scenario title on a scenario page:
###
### Costs
**Title-by-title 'content fee'**
A content fee charged by publishers if you buy subscriptions title-by-title (literature suggests 5.7% for subscriptions).
Default: 5.7%
**Title-by-title subscription cost growth**
The annual percent increase you expect in title-by-title subscription prices (literature suggests 8%).
Default: 8%
###
### ILL
**ILL transaction cost**
The cost of an ILL request for your institution (literature suggests $17 is average).
Default: $17
**ILL Request Rate**
The percent of turnaways that will result in an ILL request. Our extensive literature review suggests 5% is a conservative estimate. (NB: 'Turnaways' are all usages that aren't fulfilled by Open Access, PTA rights, or title-by-title subscriptions in this scenario.)
Default: 5%
###
### Fulfillment Sources
**Include Bronze OA**
Include Bronze OA as a type of fulfillment. Bronze OA is when a paper is made freely available on a publisher site without an open license (includes Elsevier's "open archive" journals).
Default: True
**Permit non-peer-reviewed versions**
For Green OA, allow submitted versions as a type of fulfillment. Submitted versions are papers made available in repositories as preprints or other versions that have not yet been peer reviewed.
Default: True
**Include ResearchGate-hosted content**
Include ResearchGate and other Academic Social Networks as a fulfillment source.
Default: True
### Citation and Authorship
**Institutional citation weight**
A citation from someone in your institution contributes this many download-equivalent points to the Usage of the journal. A common value is 10 -- in this case a citation from your institution to this journal is modeled as the equivalent of 10 downloads of this journal.
Default: 10
**Institutional authorship weight**
A paper authored by someone in your institution contributes this many download-equivalent points to the Usage of the journal. A common value is 100 -- in this case an authored paper in this journal is modeled as the equivalent of 100 downloads of this journal.
Default: 100
# Cost per use (CPU)
We evaluate journal cost effectiveness using an advanced version of Cost Per Use (CPU).
While we normally refer to our version as CPU in the application, its technical term is Net Cost per Paid Use, or NCPPU.
NCPPU is based on traditional Cost Per Use (CPU), but enhanced in what we consider some very important ways. We'll describe the differences here by breaking apart the phrase, starting with the end first:
**Use**
Use is traditionally considered just downloads. This is great, but usage should also include other kinds of value, like citations to the journal and authorships in the journal. NCPPU includes this kind of usage.
**Paid**
Don't pay for free! When articles are available for free, usage of those articles shouldn't be considered a cost. Therefore NCPPU excludes all Usage to free content, such as articles available as Open Access or your Backfile.
**Net Cost**
The cost in NCPPU isn't just the subscription cost, because the alternative to subscribing doesn't cost $0. When libraries don't subscribe to a journal they still offer access to the journal via ILL, and this has a cost for the library. So we consider the cost to be the difference between the [projected subscription cost](/how-it-works/how-do-we-calculate-title-by-title-subscription-costs) and the [projected ILL cost](/how-it-works/how-do-we-calculate-ill-requests-and-ill-cost), were the library to not subscribe.
So that's what NCPPU is, and how we calculate Cost Per Use in Unsub! The net cost of subscription minus ILL, divided by weighted usage to articles which aren't available for free.
It's fun to note that this CPU can actually be negative! If the subscription cost is relatively low, and the Usage is relatively high, the estimated cost of ILL can be higher than the cost of subscribing to a journal!
# Data export
Learn the details behind all the variables Unsub uses to forecast your costs and fulfillment
The data fields in the Download as Spreadsheet are described here:
### Metadata
**issn\_l\_prefixed**
The primary ISSN we use for this journal (see issn.org [Linking ISSNs](https://www.issn.org/understanding-the-issn/assignment-rules/the-issn-l-for-publications-on-multiple-media/)) prefixed with "issn:"
**issn\_l**
The primary ISSN we use for this journal (see issn.org [Linking ISSNs](https://www.issn.org/understanding-the-issn/assignment-rules/the-issn-l-for-publications-on-multiple-media/))
**title**
The title of this journal.
**issns**
A JSON array of ISSNs for this journal
**publisher**
The name of the publisher of the journal. "null" if we do not know the name of the publisher.
{% hint style="info" %}
OpenAlex uses the term "concept" - which is equivalent to "subject" here
{% endhint %}
**subject**
A single OpenAlex concept (equivalent to subject in Unsub). The concept is selected by filtering to level zero OpenAlex concepts, then selecting those with the maximum score. If there's more than one concept we then select one alphabetically, starting from "A". You may also want to look at **subject\_top\_three** due to this alphabetical selection. See [OpenAlex docs](https://docs.openalex.org/about-the-data/venue#x_concepts) for more information.
**subject\_top\_three**
The top three OpenAlex concepts. Selected using the top three level zero OpenAlex concepts based on their score for strength of association between the journal and the concept. See [OpenAlex docs](https://docs.openalex.org/about-the-data/venue#x_concepts) for more information.
**subjects\_all**
All level zero OpenAlex concepts and their IDs in a JSON array. With the IDs one can look up more information on each concept by appending the ID to `https://openalex.org` (e.g., ). See [OpenAlex docs](https://docs.openalex.org/about-the-data/venue#x_concepts) for more information.
### Summary
**subscribed**
`True` if you currently have the journal modeled as "subscribed" in your scenario, `False` if the journal is currently "unsubscribed"
**is\_society\_journal**
`True` if the journal is a society journal; `False` if not.
**usage**
The projected Usage of the journal by your institution. Usage is a measure of the journal's value to your institution. It is calculated as:
`Usage of a journal =`
`Downloads from the journal`
`+ (Citations to the journal by your authors) * (citation weight)`
`+ (Authored papers in the journal) * (authorship weight)`
**cpu**
This is the Cost per Use (CPU) of the journal. We use a more advanced variant of CPU (internally we call this Net Per Paid Use, or NCPPU). This CPU calculation is the net cost (subscription minus ILL), divided by Paid Use (Usage that can't be met with free sources). This is our most important measure of journal value--it summarizes the real value you're getting for your subscription dollar. This article has more details: [How do we calculate cost-effectiveness (Cost Per Use, CPU)](https://intercom.help/get-unsub/en/articles/4061107-how-do-we-calculate-cost-effectiveness-cost-per-use-cpu)
**cpu\_rank**
The journal's rank according to CPU, relative to other journals in this dataset. The most cost-effective journal has a rank of 1.
**cost**
The cost of this journal according to the Settings and Subscription status of the journals in this Scenario. It will be either Subscription Cost or ILL Cost (see next columns), depending on whether the journal is currently subscribed to or not in this scenario.
**instant\_usage\_percent**
The percent of Usage that is available instantly -- available as Open Access, PTA, or Subscription.
**free\_instant\_usage\_percent**
The percent of Usage that can be fulfilled via Open Access or PTA. This excludes usage met only by ILL or Subscription.
### Costs
**subscription\_cost**
The title-by-title subscription cost of this journal. It includes a 'content fee' based on your settings, and annual price increases over the next five years (the cost shown is the average cost over the next five years). This data is based on public price lists unless you've uploaded a custom price list (available in a purchased account). This article has more details: [How do we calculate title-by-title subscription costs?](/how-it-works/how-do-we-calculate-title-by-title-subscription-costs)
**ill\_cost**
The ILL subscription cost of this journal. It is based on the ILL transaction cost and your ILL Request Rate, both of which are adjustable parameters. This article has more details: [How do we calculate ILL requests and ILL cost?](/how-it-works/how-do-we-calculate-ill-requests-and-ill-cost)
**subscription\_minus\_ill\_cost**
The net cost of the subscription, which is the Subscription cost above minus the ILL cost (since almost all universities will offer a journal by ILL if they didn't subscribe). For some journals with very high Usage and low subscription prices this number is actually negative -- subscribing is \*cheaper\* than filling all the anticipated ILL requests.
### Fulfillment
**use\_oa\_percent**
The percent of Usage that can be fulfilled via as Green, Hybrid, or Bronze Open Access. Some of this content can be excluded in the settings (see the Open Access page for more info).
**use\_backfile\_percent**
The percent of Usage that can be fulfilled via your PTA (Post-Termination Access) rights.
\
**use\_subscription\_percent**
Percent of Usage that can be fulfilled ONLY via title-by-title subscription in this scenario--after fulfilling requests via Open Access and PTA fulfillment wherever possible.
**use\_ill\_percent**
Percent of Usage that is fulfilled via ILL in this scenario. This is simply turnaways (Usage that can't be fulfilled by Open Access, PTA, or your title-by-title subscriptions) multiplied by your ILL Request Rate parameter. This article has more details: [How do we calculate ILL requests and ILL cost?](/how-it-works/how-do-we-calculate-ill-requests-and-ill-cost)
**use\_other\_delayed\_percent**
Percent of Usage that is fulfilled via Unknown paths in this scenario. This all Usage that isn't fulfilled by Open Access, PTA rights, title-by-title subscription or ILL. Instead, the user fulfills their information need some other way -- asks the author for a paper, asks a colleague, finds another similar paper that is good enough for their purposes, etc.
**perpetual\_access\_years\_text**
The years when your institution has PTA (Post-Termination Access) to this title. Default: empty.
\
**baseline\_access\_text**
Optional text for those who have already left their Big Deals, to annotate which journals they'd previously subscribed to.
**bronze\_oa\_embargo\_months**
For some journals the publisher automatically makes the content free to read after a certain number of months. For those journals, this column lists the age of the articles (in months) when they will automatically become free to read on the publisher's site.
### Usage Components
**downloads**
The number of times people in your institution will download papers from this journal. We base this on your COUNTER statistics and literature on [download decay curves](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/795310v1) (how often an article is to be downloaded based on how long ago it was published).
**citations**
The number of times that a paper authored by someone in your institution will cite a paper in this journal. This number is based on the citations patterns of the previous five years. The importance of this number to overall Usage is determined by the Citation Weight parameter.
**authorships**
The number of papers in this journal that have at least one author from your institution. This number is based on the authorship patterns of the previous five years. The importance of this number to overall Usage is determined by the Authorship Weight parameter.
### Fuzzed
#### **\*\_fuzzed**
We include a few "fuzzed" columns, in case you want to share this data approximately but not exactly. For each column that's fuzzed, we ranked all the values in a column, then separated the values into three equal sized groups, and labelled them low, medium, and high. Low refers to the lowest value by rank, high refers to the highest value by rank, and medium in the middle. Where there is no value for the un-fuzzed value, we use a dash ("-").
If you want more fine grained resolution among titles you can refer to the un-fuzzed columns.
# Turnaways
Titles with only turnaways may show up in your dashboard
Unsub modeling uses many parameters, [many of which are user-configurable](/reference/scenarios/scenario-parameters). One of the many parameters we use is turnaways data.
COUNTER 5 includes turnaways data in the TR\_J2 file (named "Journal Access Denied").
We include all titles in the TR\_J2 file that have data for the metric **No\_License** unless they fall into one of the [exceptions explained here](/troubleshooting/why-dont-i-see-a-certain-title-in-my-dashboard).
We include those titles because they are cases of people attempting to access the full-text of an article that were redirected to the abstract.
In Unsub we want to account for what people want to read - regardless of whether they have access to full-text or not. This is why we include turnaways: to better account for everything users want to read.
Note**:** If you’re using COUNTER 4 we do not count turnaways because they are not included in COUNTER 4. However, if you use COUNTER 5 we do count turnaways.
# ROR: Research Organization Registry
Your Institution page includes a section on ROR. Here's what that is
ROR is a unique ID for institutions--like ISSN or DOI, but for research organizations.
Or, in the words of [their website](https://ror.org/about/), "ROR is the Research Organization Registry, a community-led project to develop an open, sustainable, usable, and unique identifier for every research organization in the world.
Unsub uses your institution's ROR in several ways, but the most important is to help improve our accuracy in tracking authorship and citations from faculty at your institution.
When you sign up for an Unsub account, we load your ROR in for you, so there's nothing you need to do about ROR. In the future you'll be able to upload other RORs, in case your institution has more than one of them (sometimes institutions have one main ROR and another one for their medical school, for example).
# Single Journal View
In histogram or table view in an Unsub scenario you can click on any journal to get to the single journal view.
For example, if we click on the box for the journal **Chest**
we then get a zoom view of that journal:
This zoomed view of a single journal contains journal metadata and a breakdown of the [Cost Per Use](/reference/cost-per-use-cpu) calculations.
On this single journal zoom you can subscribe or unsubscribe if you're already subscribed to the journal.
### Overview
The overview tab contains journal metadata, annual usage, annual cost, and the CPU value.
#### Journal metadata
This section of the single journal view contains:
* Subject: a single subject from OpenAlex concepts - see [Data export](/reference/data-export) for more information.
* ISSN: the Linking ISSN (or ISSN-L)
* Society Journal: Whether the journal is a society journal ("Yes") or not ("No").
* Delayed OA: Whether the journal a delayed OA journal ("Yes") or not ("No"). If "Yes", then the journal makes content free to read after an embargo period has passed - and there will be an additional row below "OA embargo length" that gives the length in months.
* PTA (Post-Termination Access) rights: This is empty if you have not uploaded PTA rights for the journal, and gives the start and end years if you have uploaded PTA rights for the journal.
{% hint style="danger" %}
Numbers are rounded! If you try to do the math yourself you may end up with slightly different results - which should always be due to rounding. If you're still not sure, get in touch at
{% endhint %}
{% hint style="info" %}
Numbers are forecasted numbers. They will not match current day numbers you may have.
{% endhint %}
#### Annual usage
**Weighted overall uses** is three components combined:
* Downloads: forecasted downloads (or usage) derived from the COUNTER reports you uploaded.
* Citations: forecasted citations to the journal from any published paper (in any journal, including this one) by members of your institution.
* Authorships: forecasted authorships in the journal by members of your institution.
Then we want to get to **Paywalled uses** because we don't want to factor free usage into our CPU calculation. To arrive at **Paywalled uses** we subtract from **Weighted overall uses**:
* Open access usage: forecasted open access usage
* PTA/Backfile usage: forecasted usage via PTA/backfile
#### Annual cost
Cost is not just the base subscription cost as you might be used to. We want to account for the cost of ILL because the opposite of subscribing is not free. There is a cost to ILL.
To get to **Net subscription cost** we subtract forecasted ILL cost from base subscription cost.
#### Cost Per Use
CPU is the **Net subscription cost** divided by **Paywalled uses**.
### Timelines
The Timelines tab has a number of sections:
* Fulfillment: breakdown of different fulfillment types by year.
* Open Access: OA fulfillment by type across all years.
* Impact: Downloads, citations, and authorships contribution to usage.
* Subscription cost: subscription details by year.
* API response: [JSON](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON) formatted response for the technical folks.
# External data
Details about external data used in Unsub
The following is a list of the external data sources used, including what they are used for, and how often the data is updated.
### Citations
Data source: [OpenAlex](https://docs.openalex.org/)
Update frequency: Quarterly (4x per year)
Used in Unsub: Journal level [Cost Per Use](/reference/cost-per-use-cpu) calculation (if you include citations in your [scenario parameters](/reference/scenarios/scenario-parameters#citation-and-authorship)). Citations data shown in [single journal view](/reference/single-journal-view) or in the table view in a scenario. Institutional level [APC Report](/how-to-guides/apc-report).
### Authorships
Data source: [OpenAlex](https://docs.openalex.org/)
Update frequency: Quarterly (4x per year)
Used in Unsub: Journal level [Cost Per Use](/reference/cost-per-use-cpu) calculation (if you include authorships in your [scenario parameters](/reference/scenarios/scenario-parameters#citation-and-authorship)). Authorships data shown in [single journal view](/reference/single-journal-view) or in the table view in a scenario. Institutional level [APC Report](/how-to-guides/apc-report).
### Journal metadata
This includes journal title, ISSNs, publisher, open access status, and whether title is currently publishing (based on date of last DOI published).
Data source: [OpenAlex](https://docs.openalex.org/)
Update frequency: Daily
Used in Unsub: Determine whether a journal should be included in Unsub dashboards or not (see [Why don't I see a certain title in my dashboard?](/troubleshooting/why-dont-i-see-a-certain-title-in-my-dashboard)), and as the source of truth to link together journals, user uploaded data, and any external journal level data.
### Journal embargo periods
Data source: Manually collected. We will soon switch over to using data from [oa.works]()
Update frequency: Not currently updated
Used in Unsub: Shown in [single journal view](/reference/single-journal-view) in Unsub dashboards, and used in calculating [Cost Per Use](/reference/cost-per-use-cpu)
### Publisher societies
Data source: Manually collected.
Update frequency: Not currently updated
Used in Unsub: Shown in [single journal view](/reference/single-journal-view) in Unsub dashboards
### Number of papers
Data source: [OpenAlex](https://docs.openalex.org/)
Update frequency: Daily
Used in Unsub: Journal level usage forecast.
### ROR and Grid identifiers
Data source: Microsoft Academic Graph
Update frequency: Not currently updated; we'll switch to OpenAlex in the near future.
Used in Unsub: Used to link together many kinds of data (journals, authors, etc.) to institutions.
### APC prices
Data source: [We get these from publisher websites](/how-it-works/where-do-the-apc-prices-come-from).
Update frequency: Not updated
Used in Unsub: For the institutional [APC Report](/how-to-guides/apc-report) for the big five publishers (Elsevier, Wiley, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, SAGE) only.
### Unpaywall
Data source: [Unpaywall](https://unpaywall.org/)
Update frequency: Every 6 hours (4x/day)
Used in Unsub: Used to determine usage patterns at a journal title level. Also used in creating citation and authorship data (see above for how citation and authorship data are used).
### Unpaywall Browser Extension
Data source: [Unpaywall](https://unpaywall.org/) Browser Extension data; aggregated statistics about journal-level year of publication usage derived from usage of people with the Unpaywall browser extension installed
Update frequency: Updated October 2022. Likely update frequency: annual
Used in Unsub: Used to determine usage patterns at a journal title level.
# How it works
This section has in depth articles geared towards understanding why.
For example, [Where do the APC prices come from?](/how-it-works/where-do-the-apc-prices-come-from)
Please let us know if you have any feedback on these articles or have ideas for new articles at
# How do we calculate your OA Publish spend?
**Note: The** [**APC Report**](/how-to-guides/apc-report) **contains different journals than the Scenarios.** It not only includes journals in your base COUNTER file, but \*all journals\* which authors from your institution have published Open Access. Specifically, it includes Gold OA journals as well as subscription journals.
We have a 15 minute video that explains the calculations in detail [here](https://vimeo.com/417000352).
An overview of the columns:
**OA Type**
Whether OA papers published in this journal are available as Gold OA or Hybrid OA. Gold is when the journal is fully OA, and Hybrid is when some of the papers in the journal are only available via subscription.\\
**APC Price**
The listed APC (Article Processing Charge) of the journal. This is the price that many journals charge their authors to publish a paper as Open Access in the journal.\\
**Number APC papers**
The number of papers in this journal, annually, that were published as Gold or Hybrid OA and include an author from your institution.\\
**Total fractional authorship**
Usually the corresponding author of a paper is the one who pays its APC. OpenAlex now identifies the corresponding institution on most articles, so when your institution is the corresponding institution on an article we attribute the full APC to you. When corresponding-institution information is not available for an article, we fall back to fractional authorship: every author is treated as equally likely to be the corresponding author. So, for example, if someone in your institution published an OA paper where they were the only author their fractional share would be 1.0, and if another team published an OA paper with three authors and only one from your institution their fractional share would be 0.3.
**APC dollars spent**
Our estimate of the APC dollars spent by your institution annually over the last five years. Calculated by multiplying the total fractional authorship by the APC price.
The total publisher APC spend for the university is the sum of all APC dollars spent across all journals (all rows in this table).
# How do we calculate ILL requests and ILL cost?
Learn how Unsub predicts your library's post-cancellation Interlibrary Loan activity and costs
Interlibrary Loan (ILL) is a key consideration in forecasting the effects of cancellation on fulfillment and cost. So naturally it's also an important part of Unsub's five-year forecasting approach, and is prominently displayed on your Scenario Overview page. To understand how we handle ILL, let's look at two parts of the equation: the expected number of **ILL requests** and the expected **ILL cost**.
## Forecasting ILL requests
We'll start by looking at how we forecast ILL requests for a single journal--let's call it *Journal X*. The approach has a few steps:
1. We start with the number of views *Journal X* received last year, using data from [your uploaded COUNTER report](/how-to-guides/upload-counter-usage-data).
2. We predict the usage of *Journal X* on your campus for each of the next five years. To do this we use an algorithm to forecast the growing (or shrinking) of interest in this journal, based on recent publication and readership trends.
3. For each of the next five years, we now generate a breakdown of how much of *Journal X's* viewership can be fulfilled instantly, via your PTA (Post-Termination Access) rights and via open access. Whatever's left over after that is a turnaway (unless of course you have chosen to subscribe title-by-title to *Journal X*).
4. We *could* naively assume that every turnaway creates an ILL request. But we know that readers often procure paywalled articles by other means, or simply find replacements. In fact, [the literature suggests](https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.04287) that (conservatively) around 5% of turnaways generate ILL requests. This 5% figure is your ILL Request Rate. So, to determine your ILL usage, Unsub simply your turnaways times your ILL Request Rate; this estimates the number of ILL requests expected for *Journal X* each year. Be default, the ILL Request Rate is 5%; you can change this figure in the scenario menu under "Parameters ➞ ILL ➞ ILL Request Rate"
That's it! Using these steps for *Journal X* we can predict the number of ILL request in each of the next five years. By giving all of the journals in your scenario this same treatment, we can estimate ILL requests across the whole package. Generally we'll display the results as a five-year average (rather than year-by-year) in order to simplify the report.
## Forecasting ILL cost
It's pretty easy to estimate the cost of ILL, once we have the number of ILL requests. We just need an estimate of the cost per request, and use that as a multiplier. Of course, this estimate needs to be the *overall* cost per request, averaging in both variable costs (eg. transaction fees) and continuing fixed costs like staff salaries.
Helpfully, there is a large body of literature estimating the the overall cost-per-request of ILL, [which is summarized here](https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.04281). From that, we find that $17 per request is the most-cited figure, and so that's the value Unsub uses by default. Of course, if you know your own library's cost per request is different from this, you can change that $17 figure via the scenario menu ("Parameters ➞ ILL ➞ ILL transaction cost.")
Now that we have an average cost per ILL request, we just multiply that number by the number ILL requests forecasted for each of the next five years; that gives us forecasted ILL costs for each of the next five years. Again, we'll generally report the *average* annual cost over the next five years for simplicity's sake.
# How do we calculate title-by-title subscription costs?
Learn where Unsub gets its journal price data, and how that data is used to forecast your future costs of subscription
A key data source for Unsub is the title-by-title price for each journal--the actual real-world cost you'll pay, should you choose to subscribe to that journal individually outside any Big Deal.
For any given journal, there are two possible **price sources** for the title-by-title price. There are also two **price modifiers** Unsub uses to fine-tune the forecast. Putting all that together lets us predict the annual price you'll pay over the next five years, *if* you to subscribe to a given journal.
### Price sources:
**1. Custom uploaded price:** you can [upload a simple spreadsheet with custom prices for each journal](/how-to-guides/upload-title-prices). Any custom prices you upload will override the default list prices. This is also how to provide prices for journals without a default price.
**2. No price:** If you haven't uploaded a custom price for a title, then the price is unknown. In that case, this journal will be *omitted from forecasting,* because we don't know how they will affect the financial side of the model. Your scenario will show a warning.
### Price modifiers:
Once you've got prices, there are also two ways those prices can be modified.
**1. Title-by-title subscription cost growth**: Unsub is designed to *forecast* your costs and fulfillment, not just report them. To do that, we need to be able to take into account changes in subscription pricing over time. That's what this parameter does: it simply describes the percentage price increase expected every year. The default, based on industry averages, is 8%, but you can change this in your scenario's menu, under "Parameters ➞ Costs ➞ Title-by-title subscription cost growth."
**2. Title-by-title content fee:** There's also a second parameter that modifies journals subscription prices, and that's the "Title-by-title content fee." This is an extra (read: hidden) fee that publishers often charge on top of their quoted subscription costs, and so it's important to account for in order to get an accurate cost estimate. By default this is set to 5.7% (a recently-reported fee for Elsevier) but again, you can edit this in the scenario's menu, under "Parameters ➞ Costs ➞ Title-by-title 'content fee.'"
### Putting it all together
Let's look at an example of how this all fits together; we'll call it *Journal X*. First, we'll find the current price of a title-by-title subscription by looking it up in our price table. Let's say you've uploaded a price of $1000.
For year one of the five-year forecast, we'd predict you'll pay $1000 plus the 5.7% "content fee" of $57, for a total of $1,057.
For year two, we also add in the 8% increase in subscription cost, giving us $1,080 for the subscription. Adding in the content fee ($61.56 now), we estimate a total of $1,141.56.
For years three, four, and five, we do the same. Finally, we average all five years together to get the estimated average annual cost of title-by-title subscription.
# Where do we get Year of Publication data for PTA and open access calculations?
We get Year of Publication data from two sources: your COUNTER 5 TR\_J4 file, and the Unpaywall browser extension usage data patterns.
Where possible we use your COUNTER 5 TR\_J4 file to get Year of Publication data. Unfortunately, usage is often too sparse for a given journal to understand a robust pattern of usage by article-age.
When necessary, we supplement your COUNTER data with anonymized data from the Unpaywall browser extension (with its more than 250,000 active users) to understand the age and OA status of journal usage.
Our approach is specified in great detail in [this preprint](https://doi.org/10.1101/795310), but to summarize we use aggregated statistics about journal-level year of publication usage derived from usage of people with the Unpaywall browser extension installed. From their (aggregated) usage calls to our API (for OA papers and also paywalled papers), we can see what the age is of the papers that the 250,000 active users of the extension are reading in each journal. From there we can derive a "download decay curve" for each journal, and what % of the actual uses are OA at the time of access.
We've done testing and determined that although the interest in a journal may vary across universities, the relative interest of older vs newer papers within a given journal doesn't -- the shape of this curve is pretty constant. This let us get going before COUNTER 5 was in widespread use, works well even for low-usage journals and small schools, and also allows us to correlate this year of publication with green OA for example -- something that COUNTER 5's year of publication stats don't handle.
# Does Unsub account for Sci-Hub usage?
An important piece of fulfillment
The Unsub Scenario view helps you visualize your fulfillment based on a variety of data inputs and parameter settings.
The "Unknown" portion of fulfillment (see figure below) can be a significant part of your fulfillment in some scenarios, especially if you have not added any title-by-title subscriptions. The Unknown grey portion of fulfillment is essentially "the reader is on their own".
A reader being on their own can mean many things, including asking the author of the paper for a PDF, asking a colleague for a PDF, and even using Sci-Hub.
You may be wondering if Unsub accounts for Sci-Hub in this grey Unknown portion of fulfillment.
Yes, Unsub does account for Sci-Hub, but not explicitly. Unsub has a parameter called "ILL Request Rate"; see [here](/reference/scenarios/scenario-parameters) and [here](/how-it-works/how-do-we-calculate-ill-requests-and-ill-cost) for more on the ILL Request Rate parameter. This parameter has a default of 5%. That is, 1 out of every 20 times a paper is sought by a reader an ILL request happens. Presumably that rate goes down if people are using Sci-Hub more.
One way you could indirectly model different Sci-Hub usage levels is to change the ILL Request Rate parameter - comparing different Unsub scenarios with different ILL Request Rate values.
# Where do the APC prices come from?
APC prices come from [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org), which records the article processing charge (APC) for each open-access article it indexes. Because the price is recorded per article, the APC report now covers a wide range of publishers rather than only the largest few, and the prices update as OpenAlex updates.
Previously we used static (2020) list prices for the five largest publishers (Elsevier, Wiley, Springer Nature, SAGE, and Taylor & Francis). The report now uses OpenAlex's per-article APC data instead.
# Testimonials
Unsub is already used by hundreds of libraries and several large consortia, even though it was only launched in November 2019.
One of our earliest users, The State University of New York, has publicly stated that Unsub (previously called Unpaywall Journals) helped them cancel their Big Deal with Elsevier in early 2020, saving millions of dollars: [press release](https://library.buffalo.edu/news/2020/04/07/suny-negotiates-new-modified-agreement-with-elsevier/), [Science](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/tool-saving-universities-millions-dollars-journal-subscriptions) article.
CRKN, the consortium of universities in Canada, has [publicly announced](https://www.crkn-rcdr.ca/en/crkn-subscribes-unsub) their subscription.
A number of other users have discussed their use of Unsub in various articles ([Science](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/tool-saving-universities-millions-dollars-journal-subscriptions)) and panels (SPARC, [NISO](https://www.niso.org/events/2020/07/no-more-big-deal-picking-and-choosing-titles-use)), including Wesleyan and Iowa State.
MIT recently walked away from their Elsevier subscriptions. Shortly afterwards, Director of Libraries Chris Bourg [tweeted](https://twitter.com/mchris4duke/status/1306951884675133445):
> The work that @jasonpriem & @researchremix of @unsub\_org do is incredibly important -- was super helpful in understanding our alternatives and making sure we had a sound strategy in place if/when we ended up out of contract with any publisher
University of Oklahoma has been an enthusiastic user of Unsub even [after walking away from their Big Deals](https://guides.ou.edu/serialsprojects). Karen Rupp-Serrano, Interim Dean | University of Oklahoma Libraries, says:
> We have found Unsub to be a great tool in our serials review toolbox. It offers the essential data we use in review projects, and in one place for ease of use. It offers important data we were unable to effectively marshall in the past, specifically citation and authorship data, open access data, ‘instant fulfillment’ and forecasting, all for an incredibly reasonable price. The staff are quick to respond to questions or concerns, and actively seek customer feedback to continuously improve their product.
We also have a publicly-viewable user group where some users discuss their experiences:
There is a press page that includes articles about Unsub:
And a [few other articles and conference presentations](http://help.unsub.org/en/articles/4429079-articles-and-webinars-about-unsub) that mention Unsub.
# Troubleshooting
This section has answers to common questions about Unsub (e.g., [Does this work for consortia?](/troubleshooting/does-this-work-for-consortia)), and higher level questions about Unsub (e.g., [Will Unsub be bought or acquired?](/troubleshooting/about-unsub/will-unsub-be-bought-or-acquired)).
Please let us know if you have any feedback on these articles or have ideas for new articles at
# Why don't I see a certain title in my dashboard?
So, you’ve uploaded your COUNTER file(s), and there’s a particular journal you have in mind and you’re not seeing it.
Since Unsub includes all relevant titles in your Unsub dashboard why would a title not be included?
There's a number of reasons a title you expect to see in your Unsub dashboard may be missing. These are those reasons:
* The journal has changed to completely open access; in which case, including it in title by title modeling no longer makes sense since you can not subscribe to it.
* The journal has stopped publishing articles.
* Your Unsub package is missing a title price (a-la-carte price) for the journal.[ See here to correct this](/how-to-guides/upload-title-prices).
* You have filtered out the title using the [journal filter setup step](/how-to-guides/upload-journal-filter). To fix this, upload a new journal filter file excluding the title(s) that you want included in your dashboard.
To get a report on what titles are missing from your dashboard see [Missing titles report](/how-to-guides/excluded-titles-report).
# Why is my journal title-by-title price not what I set it to be?
Handling difference between uploaded title-by-title price, and the price as displayed in the forecast scenarios
**Problem**: in the Publisher Setup tab, you've uploaded a title-by-title Journal Pricelist. Let's say you've uploaded a price of $1000 for The Journal of Example Studies.
Then you go to the forecast scenario, and look at the same journal--but the price is higher.
**Solution**: The price you uploaded is the *current* annual price of the journal.
But on the scenario page, we're looking at your *forecasted* annual price of this journal, averaged over the next five years. Everything in the Scenario view is about the future state of the world, over the next five years....specifically it's looking at the one-year average over the next five years.
The number in the scenario view is higher because, over the next five years, you will probably pay a higher price for this journal than you do now. When we forecast future journal prices, we include a term to model year-on-year increase in price. By default this is 8% (based on historical trends), but you can set it to any number you like, including 0%, by clicking Parameters➞Costs➞Title-by-title subscription cost growth.
# What’s the right amount of titles to subscribe to?
There is no right answer!
What Unsub helps you do is get the information you need to make a decision for yourself. Here are a few ways to think about this:
If your library is flush with cash, then you can make access more convenient for your users via subscriptions.
If your library has a constrained budget, then a great approach is to think about what's the best cost per use. We don’t have to tell you that collections development is about tradeoffs: as you start getting to larger values of Cost Per Use, you get worse value; if you stick to relatively low
# Where does the citation and authorship data come from?
Citation and authorship data come from [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/).
There are a few different sources of this kind of data. OpenAlex is superior to the alternatives, and here's why. We think coverage is the most important factor when considering the Unsub use case. According to Harzing (2016) Coverage of MAG (and therefore OpenAlex as it's built on MAG) is better than WoS and at least as good as Scopus. Visser et al. (2020) found that MAG had the highest overall coverage of the set: MAG, WoS, Scopus, Dimensions and Crossref.
References:
Harzing, A.-W. (2016). Microsoft Academic (Search): a Phoenix arisen from the ashes? Scientometrics, 108(3), 1637–1647.
Visser, M., van Eck, N. J., & Waltman, L. (2020). *Large*-*scale comparison of bibliographic data sources: Scopus, Web of Science, Dimensions, Crossref, and Microsoft Academic*.
### What years are included in calculating the citations and authorships data in the single journal view popup?
As of right now (August 2022) the years we are pulling from to get citations and authorships data are: 2014-2022
### How does Unsub model authorships and citations?
It’s a linear extrapolation of current data. That is, if there’s 10 authorships in the Journal of Current Chemistry in the last year of data we have, then each future year we’d forecast 10 authorships. Citations works the same way.
### How often is authorship and citation data updated?
We'll have more details here soon regarding update frequency.
# How do you calculate the open access portion of the forecast?
Data we use to calculate the open access portion of your Unsub forecast comes from our other product [OpenAlex](https://docs.openalex.org/).
The calculation of the open access portion is not based just on whether a journal is open access or not, or how many articles in the journal are open access. It’s based on readership information. Of the articles that people actually visited, what percent of those are open access. To put this in concrete terms, if there’s a journal with 100 articles in it, and people only read 1 paper, it’s essentially a toll access journal.
# Does this work for consortia?
Yes! We have a number of consortia that use Unsub, including JISC ([Joint Information Systems Committee](https://www.jisc.ac.uk/)) and CRKN ([Canadian Research Knowledge Network](https://www.crkn-rcdr.ca/)). We also have groups of institutions that use Unsub that are are not official consortia, but are, for example, most of the universities in a small country.
There are a few different Unsub set up scenarios to fit different use cases involving groups of institutions:
* Central consortium dashboard, with individual institutional dashboards for each consortium member
* No central consortium dashboard - only individual institutional dashboards for each consortium member
A few notes about consortia:
* The consortium is usually the purchasing agent
* Each subscribing institution that is part of the consortium needs to have their own dashboard
* For a consortial dashboard, not all members of a consortium have to subscribe to Unsub. For example, if a library consortium has 20 members, even if only half of them (10) subscribe to Unsub, that is no problem at all
# Why does the forecast data change?
Regular data updates are a normal part of the system -- we are constantly improving both the source data and the math that goes into the model.
We don't expect data changes to be large, and in fact we work to make sure they aren't -- we favor frequent small updates over a few big ones. This helps make sure the model is as accurate as possible at any given time, while avoiding big jarring shifts in the model outputs.
If you'd like to be updated of large changes, you can sign up for our very low traffic Updates Announcement list [here](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/unsub-announce); all changes are also recorded [here](https://github.com/ourresearch/jump-api/blob/master/RELEASE_NOTES.md).
# What does the "Missing PTA" warning mean?
Do you have a warning like this at the top of your Forecast Scenario?
If so, it's because you haven't yet loaded a Post-Termination Access (PTA) file to this Package.
PTA goes by a variety of names. It is sometimes called Backfile, Post-Cancellation Access (PCA), or Perpetual Access (PA).
**Loading a PTA dates file into Unsub is important to get an accurate forecast estimate** — it allows us to know what (if any) fulfillment you can expect from your post-termination sources if you cancel your current subscriptions.
If you haven't loaded in any PTA dates, we assume you don't have any Post-Termination Access. **This means we are likely underestimating** the amount of Access in your cancellation scenarios -- in our experience most universities can fulfill about 12%-25% of usage via Post-Termination Access, over and above what is available through Open Access.
To fix this warning: go to the Package page (you can click its name in the top left corner of your screen), then view the Setup tab, and finally select the "PTA" menu option. Then upload a file with your PTA dates. See [this article](/how-to-guides/upload-pta-data) for details on how to format and upload that PTA file.
# What does the "Missing Prices" warning mean?
Do you have a warning like this at the top of your Forecast Scenario?
If so, it's because we don't know the subscription price for some of the journals in your COUNTER reports.
We'd like to include these journals in the forecast scenario, but we can't, because without a title-level subscription price, we can't calculate its title-level cost per use.
So, **any journals with missing prices are omitted from your forecasting dashboards.** That makes the forecasting less useful to you, since we're just ignoring some journals that might be important.
That means you'll need to contact your sales representative to get a quote for these missing prices.
To find out which journals are missing prices: go to the Package page (you can click its name in the top left corner of your screen), then view the Setup tab, and finally select the "Pricelist" menu option. Click "View Journals" to download a spreadsheet showing the missing journals. These are the ones you'll need to ask a quote for.
Once you've got price quotes for the missing titles, you can then upload a custom Journal Pricelist file and resolve the warning. See [this article](/how-to-guides/upload-title-prices) for details on how to format and upload your Pricelist file.
# What does the "Journal Whitelist" alert mean?
Do you have a warning like this at the top of your Forecast Scenario?
If so, it's because you uploaded a whitelist of titles.
Only titles in your whitelist will be included in your scenario. All others will be excluded.
To find out which journals you're whitelisting go to the Package page (you can click its name in the top left corner of your screen), then view the Setup tab, and finally select the **Filter** menu option. Click the down arrow to download a spreadsheet showing the titles in your whitelist.
You can delete your whitelist file at any time by clicking the trashcan icon.
See the [Upload journal filter](/how-to-guides/upload-journal-filter) page for more details.
# How do I switch between University accounts?
You may have access to more than one Unsub university account, if, for example, you are a librarian at more than one institution, are consulting for multiple institutions, or your single institution has multiple accounts (as sometimes happens when a university has an account through a consortia and also a stand-alone account).
In this case, you may want to switch between institutions.
You can do this by going to the User menu in the upper right (icon looks like a profile picture) and then selecting "Your account":
From there you will see a page that lists the institution dashboards you have access to. Click the institution name to see its Unsub account:
If you want to access a Consortium Unsub dashboard because you are on the management team of a Consortium then that will be listed under the "Consortia" tab above, rather than the "Institutions" tab.
# What publishers are supported?
Unsub supports all publishers as well as a mix of publishers as you may have through an aggregator such as EBSCO or ProQuest.
# About Unsub
# Does Unsub have an accessibility statement?
Yes, we do! You can find it here:
# How is Unsub different from Consortium Manager?
Both are useful tools, for different purposes
The difference between Consortium Manager (CM) and Unsub is apparent in their names: CM helps you **manage** your existing subscriptions, while Unsub helps you find and **unsub**scribe to low-value subscriptions, saving you money.
CM covers five steps: Evaluation, Information, Acquisition, Invoicing, and Administration. Unsub only does one of these: Evaluation. But because we’re specialized, Unsub is much more effective *for evaluation*--so much so that Unsub can [save you millions of dollars in subscription costs](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/tool-saving-universities-millions-dollars-journal-subscriptions).
Let's dig deeper into evaluation. To assess subscription value, CM uses the basic Cost-Per-Use approach (CPU), which is a great start. Unsub expands on this considerably:
* CM counts up your old usage and cost data to tell you what your CPU *has been*. Unsub uses that same data to build a complex forecasting model that *predicts* your costs (including ILL costs), fulfillment, and CPU five years into the future. You can customize the parameters of the model, creating multiple forecasts under different assumptions.
* For CM, usage means "downloads." That's fine but it's just one kind of usage. When your faculty cites a journal, or authors a paper in a journal, that's another kind of usage as well. Unsub tracks your faculty's citations and authorships, and includes it as a customizable "weight" along with downloads, giving you a more accurate picture of usage..
* CM ignores the impact of Open Access (OA) on usage. In many journals, over half of all usage can be fulfilled by OA, at no cost to you. Unsub accounts for this, showing how OA can allow you to cancel certain subscriptions with very little impact on faculty access.
In short: Unsub reveals massive savings overlooked by simple CPU calculations. Publishers have been overcharging libraries for a long time, and Unsub is the first tool sophisticated enough to reveal this. This *Science* headline about Unsub really says it all: ["This tool is saving universities millions of dollars in journal subscriptions."](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/tool-saving-universities-millions-dollars-journal-subscriptions)
So to recap, CM handles a lot of jobs. Which is great! It's a useful tool. Unsub, on the other hand, handles just one job, evaluation. By specializing in evaluation, we're able to do it really well.
Consortium Manager will save you time as you administer your subscriptions. Unsub will save you money as you renegotiate your subscriptions.
# Unsub and Open Source
We'd like to clarify two issues related to Unsub and open source.
### Open Source but not Open Contribution
Unsub does not take contributions from outside contributors. We are a small team and it takes time to manage community contributions. We are however always eager to hear user feature requests and bug reports to improve the product.
The creator of the database BoltDB has [an explanation](https://github.com/benbjohnson/litestream#open-source-not-open-contribution) of why his newer project litestream is open source BUT not open contribution.
### Open Source but cannot be self-hosted
Many open source projects can be run by anyone, anywhere (server, local machine, etc.) - anyone can get the same outcome running it on their own as the owners of the project. So why would a project be open source but not be able to be self-hosted?
For Unsub, there is a significant component of user supplied data, as well as data curated in house, making it only possible to operate as a hosted application.
This situation is similar to those projects that are [source-available](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software).
# Will Unsub be bought or acquired?
We’re often asked: How can we know Unsub won’t be acquired? What makes Unsub (and the company behind it, [Our Research](https://ourresearch.org/)) different than Bepress, SSRN, Mendeley, Publons, Kopernio, etc?
**How can we be sure you won’t be bought by someone whose values don’t align with open science?**
There are no credible *guarantees* we can offer that this won’t happen, and nor can any other organization. However, we think stability in the values and governance of Our Research is a relatively *safe bet*. Here’s why (note: not a lawyer and the below isn’t legal advice, obvs):
We’re incorporated as a 501(c)3 nonprofit. This was *not* true of recently-acquired open science platforms like Mendeley, SSRN, and Bepress, which were all for-profits. We think that’s fine…the world needs for-profits. But we sure weren’t surprised when any of them were acquired. These are for-profit companies, which means they are, er:
*For: Profit.*
Legally, their purpose is profit. They may benefit the world in many additional ways, but their officers and board have a fiduciary *duty* to deliver a return to investors.
Our officers and board, on the other hand, have a legal fiduciary duty to fulfill our nonprofit *mission*, even where this doesn’t make much money. I think instead of “nonprofit” it should be called *for-mission*. Mission is the goal. That can be a big difference. Jefferson Pooley did a great job articulating the value of the nonprofit structure for scholcomm organizations in more detail in a [much-discussed LSE Impact post last year](http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2017/08/15/scholarly-communications-shouldnt-just-be-open-but-non-profit-too/).
All that said, we're not going to sit here and tell you nonprofits *can’t* be acquired…cos although that may be technically true, [nonprofits can still be, in all-but-name, acquired](https://www.americanbar.org/publications/blt/2014/06/02_boyd.html). It’s just less common and harder.
So we like to also emphasize that the source code for these projects we are doing is open. That means that for any given project, its main asset–the code that makes our project work–is available for free to anyone who wants it. This makes us much less of an acquisition target. Why buy the cow when the code is free, as it were.
As a 501(c)3 nonprofit, we have a board of directors that helps keep us accountable and helps provide leadership to the organization as well. Past board members have included Cameron Neylon and John Wilbanks, with a current board of Jason Priem, Heather Piwowar, Ethan White, and Heather Joseph. Heather, Ethan, John, and Cameron have each contributed mightily to the Open cause, in ways that would take me much longer than we have to fully chronicle (and most of you probably know anyway). We’re incredibly proud to have (and have had) them tirelessly working to help Our Research (formerly Impactstory) stay on the right course. We think they are people that can be trusted.
In June 2021 [we committed](https://blog.ourresearch.org/posi/) to the [Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure](https://openscholarlyinfrastructure.org/) (POSI). Many of the POSI principles contribute to making Our Research a sustainable organization that will not be bought or acquired. Read [our blog post](https://blog.ourresearch.org/posi/) to find out more about our commitment.
Finally, and y’all can make up your own minds about this, we like to think our team has built up some credibility in the space. We have both been working entirely on open-source, open science projects for the last ten years, and most of that work’s pretty easy to find if you want to check it out. In that time, it’s safe to assume we’ve turned down some better-paying projects that aligned less closely with the open science mission.
So, being acquired? Not in our future. But growth sure is, through grants and partnerships and customer relationships and lots of hard work… all in the service of making scholcomm more open. 🙂
*Reposted from* [*our blog*](https://blog.ourresearch.org/independent/) *with minor updates, and with minor editing from a response Jason gave on the* [*Global Open Access*](http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal) *mailing list, July 12 2018.*
# Learning Resources
Articles and webinars about or by Unsub
### Unsub webinar series
Unsub runs a webinar series, with the goal of bringing together Unsub users to learn from one another as well as for us to disseminate Unsub best practices.
We have a dedicated webinars page on the Unsub website. Find it at:
Recordings of each webinar are available at our Vimeo page at:
### Other resources
Note that we also have some older Unsub talks on Vimeo as well. Find those at
Unsub has a press page with links to articles:
A few articles have been published recently that mention Unsub. We know it can be interesting and useful to read and share these with others, so check them out:
* [Taking a Big Bite Out of the Big Deal ](https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2020/05/19/taking-a-big-bite-out-of-the-big-deal/)on Scholarly Kitchen by Lisa Hinchliffe
* [This tool is saving universities millions of dollars in journal subscriptions](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/tool-saving-universities-millions-dollars-journal-subscriptions) in *Science*
* [Unsub Gives Libraries Powerful Evidence to Walk Away from Big Deals](https://sparcopen.org/news/2020/unsub-gives-libraries-powerful-evidence-to-walk-away-from-big-deals/) on SPARC's blog
* [Tools for Negotiation: Using Unsub to Assess Subscription Value](https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/play/6ZQqd-D-qj03HYeS5ASDBv4rW9TuLKus0SZPr6VexErmUHIAMFGnZbNGYbRfWMJqTCSu1P1QU_dND0Is?continueMode=true), SPARC webinar with Heather Piwowar, Nathan Mealey (Wesleyan), Mark McBride (SUNY), and Katharine Macy (UIPUI)
* [No More Big Deal? Picking and Choosing Titles for Use](https://www.niso.org/events/2020/07/no-more-big-deal-picking-and-choosing-titles-use), NISO webinar (Unsub mentioned often) with Keith Webster (CMU), Evviva Weinraub Lajoie (State University of New York at Buffalo), and Curtis Brundy (Iowa State University)