Agreement with Elsevier cancelled over open access

A consortium of Swedish universities and research institutions will not renew its current contract with Elsevier that expires at the end of June, Times Higher Education reported on 16 May, writes Ashley Yeager for The Scientist. The move comes not long after academic institutions in other countries have let publishers’ subscriptions lapse when fee negotiations came to an impasse.

“The current system for scholarly communication must change, and our only option is to cancel deals when they don’t meet our demands for a sustainable transition to open access,” Astrid Söderbergh Widding, president of Stockholm University and chair of the consortium, told OpenAccess.se, a blog published by the National Library of Sweden.

According to the blog, the Bibsam Consortium, representing 85 higher education and research institutions in the country, had requested that Elsevier allow researchers at the institutions to publish their work in open access formats and receive reading access to all of the publisher’s journal articles. The consortium also wanted the publisher to commit to a pricing structure that would encourage the move to open access.
Full report on The Scientist site