This post is a press release issued by the University of California, California State University, the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium, and Oxford University Press.
The 10-campus University of California system (UC), 20 of 23 California State University (CSU) campuses, and 30 private academic and research institutions represented by the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC) have reached a comprehensive four-year transformative open access agreement with Oxford University Press (OUP). The agreement begins this month and will provide affiliated researchers with access to OUP’s world-leading journals and support for publishing their work open access.
“This partnership between UC, CSU and SCELC demonstrates the power of collaboration across diverse institutions,” said Mark Hanna, Associate Professor of History at UC San Diego and chair of the UC faculty Academic Senate’s systemwide committee on library and scholarly communication. “By joining forces, we are advancing open access and amplifying the global impact of California’s scholarship. I’m excited to see this significant step forward, which reflects our shared commitment to creating a more accessible, equitable, and sustainable future for scholarly communication.”
This major agreement harnesses the resources of research institutions, private liberal arts colleges, comprehensive universities, and special libraries across California by redirecting existing library subscription funds to support authors publishing open access. The agreement enables authors at the participating institutions to publish articles using an open access license at reduced or no cost in more than 500 hybrid and fully open access OUP journals. Authors with grant funds available will pay a discounted open access publishing fee across OUP’s hybrid and fully open access journals. Authors who do not have grant funds available will be able to publish open access in hybrid journals at no cost to them.
“As a catalyst for transformative change in scholarly communication, SCELC is dedicated to forging agreements that empower libraries and their researchers,” said Teri Oaks Gallaway, SCELC executive director. “By working with Oxford University Press, we are not only expanding access to high-impact research but also driving a more sustainable and equitable publishing future for our member institutions.”
Transformative agreements provide a way for institutions to maintain access to scholarly content available only through subscription, while supporting the transition to open access publishing by their affiliated researchers. Institutions are, in effect, redirecting their expenditures on subscriptions to cover the open access article publication charges. Through this agreement, thousands of researchers at 60 institutions will be eligible for financial support when they choose to publish open access in OUP journals.
“CSU libraries are delighted to provide our students and faculty with access to more OUP journals than ever before and the opportunity to openly publish their research,” said Ann Roll, Director of Systemwide Digital Library Content at the CSU Office of the Chancellor. “Through transformative and collaborative work with our partners at UC and SCELC, CSU research can be shared openly and CSU students will have the OUP resources they need for their success, all at a sustainable cost to CSU libraries.”
The aim of this transformative agreement is to make it easier and more affordable for authors from SCELC, CSU and UC institutions to publish open access rather than behind a paywall, while also controlling the participating institutions’ journal expenditures. Like other transformative agreements at UC, CSU and SCELC, this agreement aligns with the institutions’ missions and contributes to the global shift towards sustainable open access publishing by making more research and scholarship from California freely available to the world.
The agreement demonstrates how innovative, diverse, multi-institution cooperation can play a vital role in the open access movement by ensuring that researchers at academic institutions of all types can fully engage in the benefits of open access publishing.
“We are delighted to reach this agreement with the California universities,” said Alastair Lewis, Sales Director, OUP. “The negotiations for this agreement have been positive and constructive, and we are really excited to expand access to our world-leading journals and open access publishing across these universities.”
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About Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. It currently publishes thousands of new publications a year, has offices in around fifty countries, and employs approximately 5,000 people worldwide.
It has become familiar to millions through a diverse publishing program that includes scholarly works in all academic disciplines, bibles, music, school and college textbooks, children’s books, materials for teaching English as a foreign language, business books, dictionaries and reference books, and academic journals.
About Open Access at Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press is the largest university press publisher of open research. Their journals are rigorously peer-reviewed, world-leading, and trusted, upholding the highest standards of publication ethics and integrity. Open access publishing is a key part of how OUP delivers on their mission to achieve the widest possible dissemination of high-quality research. Their open access programme comprises over 150 fully open access journals, more than 100 open access monographs a year, and the option to publish open access in over 500 journals. The Press publishes more than 3,000 open access articles per month across all major subject areas.
Oxford University Press has been publishing journals for more than a century and has more than 500 years of publishing expertise.
About the University of California Libraries and Open Access at UC
Individually and collectively, the University of California libraries provide access to the world’s knowledge for the UC campuses and the communities they serve, directly supporting UC’s missions of teaching, research and public service. Open access publishing supports the mission of the University of California by transmitting knowledge more broadly and facilitating new discoveries that build on the University’s research and scholarly work. UC generates nearly 10 percent of all research output in the United States; half of which is eligible for open access publishing under one of the university’s 17 transformative agreements. Learn more about open access at UC.
About the California State University
The California State University is the nation’s largest four-year public university system, providing transformational opportunities for upward mobility to more than 460,000 students from all socioeconomic backgrounds across 23 campuses. More than half of CSU students are from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds, and more than one-quarter of undergraduates are first-generation college students. The CSU powers California and the nation, sending nearly 125,000 career-ready graduates into the workforce each year. In fact, one in every 20 Americans holding a college degree earned it at the CSU. The CSU Chancellor’s Office coordinates contracts for over 525 library e-resource products for the 23 CSU libraries who serve their students, faculty and the public with their diverse research needs.
About the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium
Among the top five North American consortia in terms of licensing volume, SCELC is an opt-in consortium composed of academic, research and medical institutions, with a predominance of small and medium-sized libraries. SCELC represents 112 Member institutions, over 230 Affiliate institutions, with a combined student population of over 1.4 million. The consortium’s read-and-publish open access agreements and renewals are guided by transformative agreement goals and values established and prioritized by its member institutions.
Media Contacts
For Oxford University Press: Diana Clough, OUP Academic Communications Manager, Diana.Clough@oup.com
For the University of California Libraries: Nikki Kolupailo, Director of Communications & Engagement, UC San Diego Library, nkolupailo@ucsd.edu
For the California State University: Ann Roll, Director of Systemwide Digital Library Content, California State University Office of the Chancellor, aroll@calstate.edu
For the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium: M Ryan Hess, Director of Strategic Library Services and Communications, ryan@scelc.org
For the California State University: Ann Roll, Director of Systemwide Digital Library Content, California State University Office of the Chancellor, aroll@calstate.edu
For the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium: M Ryan Hess, Director of Strategic Library Services and Communications, ryan@scelc.org
For more details on UC’s agreement with Oxford University Press and what it means for UC authors, please see our FAQ on the agreement.
