Some laud the agreement. Others say it falls short. If nothing else, the deal offers an example of how a collection of colleges is navigating a tense academic publishing ecosystem.
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When the University of California system canceled its bundled journal subscription deal with publisher Elsevier and walked away from contract negotiations in 2019, it wasn’t clear whether the two parties would ever be able to get back on the same page.
The UC system wanted to save money and stop supporting the production of research that is inaccessible to the public. Elsevier offered to combine the costs of accessing paywalled content and publishing open-access articles. But the offer came with a price tag with the UC system was not willing to pay.
Over the past two years, both the UC system and Elsevier struck up multiple open-access agreements with other parties. Elsevier has now signed 15 open-access deals, while the UC system has signed nine. With more experience and data, Elsevier went back to the UC system in the summer of 2020 with a new proposal, and negotiations began again in earnest.