Agreement with Elsevier is terminated

Swedish research libraries have announced that the agreement with the large scientific publisher, Elservier, will not be renewed as the publisher does not meet the requirements for open access.

Bibsam Consortium, which is administrated by Kungliga biblioteket (Sweden’s national library), negotiates all licensing for Swedish universities, colleges, local authorities and state research institutes. The decision not to renew the agreements was taken during negotiations with Elsevier and was made with recommendation from the Swedish Federation of Universities and Higher Education (SUHF).

This is the first time that the consortium has terminated an agreement of this size. The background to the decision is the government’s goal to have immediate open access to scientific results by 2026 and SUHF’s conviction that today’s subscription-based systems must be transformed into an openly available publishing system.

The current agreement is terminated as of 30 June, 2018. After this date, students and staff will no longer have access to new articles published by Elsevier. Articles published between 1995 and June 2018 will still be available. The library has purchased backfiles of another 150 journals, which are available from their start of publication.

Older articles will still be available, and researchers at Jönköping University will still be able to publish in Elsevier journals.

Every year, Swedish researchers publish around 4,000 articles in Elsevier’s journals and last year approximately 13 million Swedish crowns were paid in open access publishing costs. In addition, participating organisations paid 120 million Swedish crowns in licensing fees to read published magazines.

Information can be found on the library’s website on how to access new articles from Elsevier.

For more information, read Kungliga Biblioteket’s press release.