ABOVE: Royce Hall at UCLA
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The University of California is pushing back against the publishing giant Elsevier over fees and access to research papers. The UC system’s five-year contract expires on December 31 and it has prepared for faculty and students to lose access Elsevier’s journals if they don’t reach an agreement in time.
At stake is both money—the UC system paid almost $11 million for the past year’s subscription—and a chance to reshape the landscape of access to publications. Currently, the UC system pays separately to read articles and provide open access to its research. To change this, the universities are pursuing a “read-and-publish” deal that would allow them to pay both costs at once. This would make their papers freely available immediately upon publication, unlike the current model that, unless authors pay extra, may only provide open access to journal articles after some time.
It’s not ...
