This new release of Unsub includes some very important updates, including a few that will change your forecasts. Because of this, we recommend that current users read these release notes carefully.
You can also check out the video guided tour of the new features here.
COUNTER 5 support
The COUNTER 5 usage data standard is now supported. To upload your usage via COUNTER 5 you will need to upload three files: a TR_J2, TR_J3, and TR_J4 (.csv or .xlsx format).
You can update an existing Package to use COUNTER 5 instead of COUNTER 4. Simply go to the new Package Setup page, delete your COUNTER 4 file, choose "COUNTER 5", and upload the three files described above
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.
Fulfillment estimates based on COUNTER 5 data will differ from estimates based on COUNTER 4 — our COUNTER 5 calculations use "Unique Request" metrics and institution-based year-of-publication data which were not available in COUNTER 4.
UI/UX updates
Many improvements have been made throughout Unsub, from the Package Setup tab, to site navigation, to the Scenario display. These release notes describe the most major, but you are likely to encounter others as you explore the app!
Journal metadata
Unsub's journal lists (which journals are published by which publishers, which journals have flipped to OA, which journals are new, which ISSNs point to the same journal, etc) have been updated. Cost-Per-Use and APC estimates on your dashboards have been updated as a result, and the number of journals displaying on your dashboards may have changed.
Newly established journals do not have much usage data and so our estimates of Cost-Per-Use may be incorrectly low; make sure to bring domain knowledge when valuing new titles.
Package setup
an Unsub package now requires three types of information to be set before a Scenario can be used (more info on each is covered in these release notes):
COUNTER data
Currency
Big Deal price
Currency
Unsub now supports both US Dollars (USD) and British pound sterling (GBP)
If you change the currency of your package, you must change all prices and costs to be accurate in the new currency, including:
Big Deal Cost
uploaded Journal Pricelist prices
ILL transaction cost
Other currencies will be added in the future, prioritized by demand
Big Deal Cost and Big Deal Cost Increase
These are now a Package-level settings rather than at the Scenario level
These must be set in order to to see your Scenarios
If you had previously set these values via a Scenario Parameter the most-recently-saved values have been copied in to the Package setting
Post-Termination Access (PTA)
Backfile (aka perpetual access, post-cancellation access) is now called PTA throughout the app
If no PTA dates are loaded, Unsub now defaults to showing no PTA. Unsub previously defaulted to showing full post-termination access to all journals, which was overly optimistic.
If no PTA dates are loaded, Unsub now displays a warning in the Package Setup and on the Scenario itself. More info: Missing PTA warning
Experimental parameters that allowed modelling partial PTA have been deprecated
Journal Pricelists
Publicly-available subscription prices have been updated to reflect the most recent institutional subscription prices on publishers' websites, in the currency set on the Unsub package. Cost-Per-Use estimates have been updated as a result, and the number of journals displaying on your dashboards may have changed.
If some journals have COUNTER data, and are known to be currently-publishing subscription journals with the given publisher, but have no subscription price available in the publicly-available list or uploaded price file, Unsub now displays a warning in the Package Setup and on the Scenario itself. The list of journals with missing prices can be downloaded from the Package setup. More info: Missing Prices warning
ILL
ILL is now displayed as its own fulfillment bar segment in Scenarios
Scenario Parameters
Scenario Parameters can now be viewed together on a single page, to make it easy to compare across scenarios or take a screenshot to share with others.
APC estimates
APC prices have been updated to reflect the most recent APC prices on publishers' websites, in the currency set on the Unsub package. APC estimates have been updated as a result.
Unsub is still basing its APC price estimates on 2019 authorship numbers, since 2020 was such a strange year in terms of publishing patterns.
Consortial packages
Packages that are used to feed usage and PTA data to consortial dashboards have been renamed "Consortial Feeder Packages" and are displayed on their own tab
Consortial dashboards themselves are shown on their own tab.
Other small features
You can now rename a package
On the Scenario page you can now filter journals using a comma-separated list of ISSNs. When in "table view" this can be an easy way to display a filtered set of journals so that you can Subscribe to them. (CMD+CLICK for Mac, or CONTROL+CLICK for Windows, on a journal row is a quick shortcut to subscribe!)
Bug fixes
Finally, we also fixed a few bugs related to caching (displaying old data even after you've uploaded something new) and PTA rows with blank dates
The Unsub documentation has all been updated to reflect the new update. If you have any questions please let us know!