With a new quarter and new year underway, you may be curious about the status of the University of California’s negotiations with Elsevier, which stalled last year.
Since then, there has been progress with other publishers as UC works to advance open access to its research.
Here’s what you need to know about UC’s latest open access efforts.
UC and Elsevier
After formal negotiations stalled in February 2019, UC and Elsevier have continued informal conversations. The parties will meet in early March to explore reopening negotiations.
Over the past year, Elsevier has signed a number of transformative agreements, and we are hopeful that this suggests that the publisher is ready to discuss a deal that aligns with UC’s goals.
If you are part of UC’s academic community, we encourage you to participate in this short poll (3 minutes) to gauge the impact of the loss of immediate access to current Elsevier content via ScienceDirect. The poll will close Feb. 29.
Wiley and Springer Nature
UC is in cordial negotiations with Wiley and Springer Nature to renew contracts that expired on Dec. 31, 2019. In each case, UC and the publishers have a shared desire to reach a transformative agreement that combines UC’s subscription with open access publishing of UC research. Both publishers have extended UC’s access to their journals, under prior contract terms, while negotiations are underway.
New Agreements: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and Journal of Medical Internet Research
UC has announced two new publisher agreements, each under a model to provide financial support for UC researchers who choose to publish their work open access.
UC is one of four major research institutions to enter into an open access publishing agreement with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Under the three-year agreement with this society publisher, UC researchers’ articles will be made openly available at the time of publication at no cost to the authors.
As part of a new two-year pilot with JMIR Publications — a native open access publisher of more than 30 digital health-related journals including its flagship Journal of Medical Internet Research — the UC Libraries will pay the first $1,000 of the open access publishing fee for all UC authors who choose to publish in a JMIR journal. Authors who do not have research funds available can request financial assistance from the libraries for the remainder of the costs, ensuring that lack of research funds does not present a barrier for UC authors who wish to publish in JMIR journals.
The two new pilots reflect the university’s commitment to finding ways to work with a range of publishers to advance open access to UC research.
Cambridge University Press: Agreement Now Fully Implemented
After an initial kickoff phase in 2019, UC’s first transformative open access agreement with Cambridge University Press is now fully in effect. Starting this month, when UC corresponding authors submit their accepted manuscript for publication with Cambridge, they will be prompted to consider making their article open access. The open access fee will be discounted by 30%, and the UC Libraries’ $1,000 subsidy will be applied automatically.
Authors who have research funding available will be asked to use those funds to pay any remaining amount, under a cost-sharing model designed to enable the UC Libraries to stretch their available funds and help as many authors as possible. If an author does not have research funds available to pay the remainder of the open access publishing fee, they can request that the libraries pay the full publishing fee. Learn more about the agreement and what it means for you if you publish with Cambridge.
Open Access Publishing Fund Available
UC Santa Barbara now has an Open Access Publishing Fund to support authors who want to make their research open access immediately upon publication and to ensure that no UCSB author who desires to publish open access is disadvantaged by a lack of funds to cover relevant fees. The UCSB OA Fund is supported and administered by the UCSB Library.
More to Come
Conversations with other publishers are also in the pipeline and we will let you know when there are major developments or new agreements to share.
If you have questions about any of these open access publishing agreements or negotiations, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at openaccess@library.ucsb.edu.
