The University of California system is currently in negotiations to renew its contracts with some of the world’s largest for-profit commercial academic journal publishers, including Elsevier.

University Librarian Steve Mandeville-Gamble will be giving a briefing for faculty regarding the status of these negotiations on Thursday, December 13, 2018, from 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. in Orbach Library, room 240.

The Elsevier journals contract expires on Dec. 31, 2018. Elsevier journals are the largest expenditure in each of the 10 UC libraries’ collections budgets. There is a growing global movement to address the unsustainable costs and restrictive nature of subscription-based journal publications.

In our negotiations, the UC is seeking a single, integrated contract with each publisher that covers both the university’s subscriptions and open access publishing of UC research in their journals. We also aim to hold down the rapidly escalating costs associated with for-profit journals.

The UC Office of Scholarly Communication has prepared this FAQ with the details, and articles in the LA Times (Dec. 8, 2018), the Chronicle of Higher Education (Dec. 12, 2018), and Inside Higher Ed (Dec. 13, 2018) can provide additional perspective.

We are reaching out to faculty because our proposal to the publishers breaks from the status quo, and we want to ensure that our faculty are aware of the potential implications, should negotiations not be completed by December 31, 2018.

Light refreshments will be available. We hope to see you there.