March 6, 2019

Last Friday, after more than 6 months of contract negotiations, the University of California terminated their multi-million dollar subscription with Elsevier, the world’s largest scholarly publisher. UC’s goal in negotiating the contract was to contain costs for its 10 campuses and authors while ensuring its published materials, which account for close to 10 percent of all U.S. publishing output, are immediately available to global readers without cost. Instead, Elsevier wanted to charge UC authors large publishing fees in addition to the university’s nearly $11 million subscription deal.