University of California system ditches Elsevier

The University of California (UC) system is calling it quits with Elsevier, one of the biggest academic publishers in the world, after months of contract negotiations.

[This is an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education, America’s leading higher education publication. It is presented here under an agreement with University World News.]

The announcement that the 10-campus system would cancel its Elsevier subscriptions represents a win for open-access advocates who saw the talks as a way for major research universities to reshape the lucrative landscape of academic publishing.

The system, which announced the decision on 28 February, had sought one contract that would cover the cost of subscriptions to Elsevier’s trove of journals in addition to the processing fees that make all UC research published in Elsevier journals freely available to all. The system’s prior five-year contract with Elsevier had cost about US$50 million.

An Elsevier spokesman did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

The California system is just the latest to back away from Elsevier. Tight library budgets have made universities reluctant to sign contracts for high-cost bulk subscription packages.

Last year, for example, Florida State University said it would not subscribe to the publishing behemoth’s journals in one bulk deal. Instead, it chose to maintain about US$1 million in subscriptions. In 2017, Elsevier published more than 430,000 articles in some 2,500 journals, according to the company.

Leverage in the negotiations between Elsevier and the UC system was held by faculty members who published in and edited for the company’s journals.

In a December letter, officials at the University of California at Los Angeles asked faculty members to consider declining to review articles for Elsevier journals until the contract talks progressed. Earlier this week the company emailed UC-based editors of Elsevier journals to say that it had proposed a model that responded to the system’s requests.

“Despite our best efforts, it is still possible we may not reach an agreement,” wrote Philippe Terheggen, managing director of Elsevier Journals. “We are making every effort to prevent a scenario where the UC loses access to new Elsevier content.”

Such a loss may present challenges to professors’ research. Faculty members consult wide swaths of articles in subscription-based journals, including the troves owned by Elsevier, as they plan, conduct and write up pioneering research.

In its announcement the university cast its decision as a win for open access.

“I fully support our faculty, staff and students in breaking down pay walls that hinder the sharing of groundbreaking research,” said the UC system’s president, Janet A Napolitano. “This issue does not just impact UC, but also countless scholars, researchers and scientists across the globe – and we stand with them in their push for full, unfettered access.”

In an annual report published on 28 February, the company’s parent, RELX, reported revenue and profit growth, but it warned that the debate over paid subscriptions may pose an external risk for future earnings.

“There is continued debate in government, academic and library communities, which are the principal customers for our (scientific, technical, and medical) content, regarding to what extent such content should be funded instead through fees charged to authors or authors’ funders and-or made freely available in some form after a period following publication,” the report says.

“Some of these methods, if widely adopted, could adversely affect our revenue from paid subscriptions.”

Lindsay Ellis is a staff reporter for the Chronicle. Follow her on Twitter @lindsayaellis, or email her at lindsay.ellis@chronicle.com.