UC ends dispute; research open to public
Nearly two years after it severed ties with the world’s largest scientific research publisher, the University of California has reached an agreement that provides free public access to most of the system’s research and restores the ability for UC students and researchers to read academic journals online.
University officials announced Tuesday that the dispute with global publisher Elsevier was resolved, calling it a “breakthrough agreement” that advances its efforts to make publicly funded research freely available to anyone in the world.
Under the fouryear agreement, all research published in Elsevier’s more than 2,500 journals led by a UC author will be available free of charge and without a subscription, the university said.
The agreement includes access to some of the world’s most prestigious scientific and medical journals, including the Lancet.
“This development is a boon for researchers, students and all other members of the public who will be able to read, use and build upon UC’s research and
scholarly work,” said Marta Margeta, associate professor of pathology at UCSF and chair of a faculty group on scholarly communication. “At all times, and especially now during a global health crisis, openly and
rapidly sharing our research can and will save lives.”
Elsevier confirmed the agreement, saying in a statement that it “has the potential to support sustainable open access for the future, in particular for a highly
researchintensive university such as UC and helps deliver the university’s goal of securing open access to UC research.”
UC terminated its contract with Elsevier in 2019 after it failed to reach agreement over open access to university research, which the system established as a priority in 2013. Without an agreement, researchers wishing to access articles published by Elsevier had to use a set of workarounds, including requesting a copy directly from its author or using an interuniversity system that took a couple of days.
UC and scholars around the world are rebelling against publishing prices they say have become not only too expensive, but also incompatible with the idea that scholarly articles can and should be available to everyone with internet access. They expect to pay for subscriptions and “open access publishing fees” but want publishers to make articles freely available to the public by default.
In 2018, the university paid Elsevier $11 million to access research in its journals.
The university did not immediately respond to questions about the cost of the new agreement.