From 2018 through 2020, the University of California engaged in negotiations with Elsevier, the world’s largest scholarly journal publisher, ultimately leading to a landmark transformative open access agreement announced in March 2021. Many of the foundational ideas honed during UC’s negotiations with Elsevier continue to inform the university’s priorities around open access, cost control, and author rights. 

• The archived UC and Elsevier page contains information on the negotiations with Elsevier. (For details about the current agreement, visit the Elsevier Transformative Open Access Agreement page.)

• The Alternative Access to Articles guide provided UC researchers with options for how to access articles during the period when UC did not have subscription access to Elsevier’s ScienceDirect platform.

Statements of Support from UC Leadership

• The Academic Senate’s University Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication (UCOLASC) unanimously endorsed the convening of a publisher negotiation task force by the UC Council of University Librarians (CoUL), as well as the task force’s priorities for negotiations.

• The Council of Vice Chancellors sent a letter expressing support for the Elsevier negotiations to the Chairs of CoUL and UCOLASC. The UC Systemwide Library and Scholarly Information Advisory Committee (SLASIAC) also sent a letter in support of the negotiations to UC’s Provost.

• The Academic Senate issued statements in support of UC’s negotiating position with Elsevier in February 2019 and July 2019.

Briefings for the UC Regents

• Academic Senate Chair Robert May briefed the UC Regents on the negotiations during multiple meetings:
  • January 2019 remarks
  • March 2019 remarks
  • July 2019 remarks

• Acting Provost and Vice Provost Susan Carlson, UC Berkeley’s University Librarian and Chief Digital Scholarship Officer Jeffrey MacKie-Mason, and Associate Vice Provost and Executive Director Günter Waibel briefed the UC Board of Regents’ Academic and Student Affairs Committee on open access and academic journal contracts in July 2019.

• UC Provost and Executive Vice President Michael T. Brown, UC Berkeley’s University Librarian and Chief Digital Scholarship Officer Jeffrey MacKie-Mason, Associate Vice Provost and Executive Director Günter Waibel, and Associate Executive Director & Director of Collection Development Ivy Anderson provided a second briefing to the Regents’ Academic and Student Affairs Committee on transformative open access and academic journal contracts in May 2021.

Key Media Coverage

• Big Deal for Open Access (Inside Higher Ed, March 17, 2021)
• In act of brinkmanship, a big publisher cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals (Los Angeles Times, July 11, 2019)
• University of California defiant as Elsevier cuts journal access (Times Higher Education, July 11, 2019 — free registration required)
• Editorial: UC open access fight exposes publishing rip-off (The Mercury News, March 6, 2019)
• The Real Cost of Knowledge (The Atlantic, March 4, 2019)
• UC terminates its subscriptions to 2,500 journals in a battle over copyrights and access (Los Angeles Times, March 1, 2019)
• The costs of academic publishing are absurd. The University of California is fighting back. (Vox, March 1, 2019)
• UC Battles With Publishing Giant Over Free Public Access to Research (KQED, January 9, 2019)
• Heavyweight Showdown Over Research Access (Inside Higher Ed, December 12, 2018)
• In UC’s battle with the world’s largest scientific publisher, the future of information is at stake (Los Angeles Times, December 7, 2018)

Opinion and Position Statements from the University of California

• University Research Should Be Free to All by UC President Janet Napolitano (Inside Higher Ed, July 30, 2020)
• University of California’s showdown with the biggest academic publisher aims to change scholarly publishing for good (The Conversation, July 15, 2019)
• Open Statement: Why UC terminated journal negotiations with Elsevier (March 20, 2019; revised April 25, 2019)
• Knowledge to the People by UC President Janet Napolitano (LinkedIn, April 9, 2019)
• University of California’s break with the biggest academic publisher could shake up scholarly publishing for good (The Conversation, March 7, 2019)
• UC is leading fight for open access to research (The Mercury News, December 30, 2018)