Published April 8, 2019 by Kate Shuttleworth on the Radical Access Blog

The University of California recently took a bold step in support of open access publishing by terminating subscriptions with Elsevier, the world’s largest scientific publisher. We asked SFU Faculty for their thoughts on the cancellation and what this means for open access.

What happened?

The University of California is committed to making the results of research freely available to anyone, anywhere in the world through open access, as indicated by UC’s faculty-driven principles on scholarly communication and its Open Access Policy which was adopted in 2013. Elsevier charges academic libraries for access to subscription-based research articles, while at the same time charging Article Processing Charges for open access articles published by UC researchers.

UC was attempting to negotiate a deal with Elsevier which would see the costs of subscription journals offset against the cost of open access publishing in order to ensure cost neutrality in the shift towards open access. When a deal could not be reached, UC canceled its Elsevier subscriptions with support from faculty and the Academic Senate, and provided a set of alternative solutions for accessing content when Elsevier begins limiting access to new content.

Read what SFU faculty had to say about the cancellation on the Radical Access blog.