Sweden stands up for open access – cancels agreement with Elsevier

"

Large science publisher Elsevier does not meet the requirements of Swedish universities and research institutes

In order to take steps towards the goal of immediate open access by 2026 set by the Swedish Government, the Bibsam Consortium has after 20 years decided not to renew the agreement with the scientific publisher Elsevier, as the publisher has not been able to present a model that meets the demands of the Consortium. To be able to make the necessary transition from a subscription-based to an open access publishing system, the Bibsam Consortium requires immediate open access to all articles published in Elsevier journals by researchers affiliated to participating organisations, reading access for participating organisations to all articles in Elsevier’s 1,900 journals and a sustainable price model that enables a transition to open access. The current agreement will be cancelled on the 30th of June.

Swedish researchers publish approximately 4 000 articles per year in Elsevier journals. In 2017 € 1,3 million was spent on article processing charges, on top of the  € 12 million that organisations spend on licensing fees for reading the Elsevier content....

Researchers from participating organisations will continue to have access to articles published during 1995-2017 according to the post-termination terms in the current agreement, however, the publisher will not give access to new subscription-based content that is published after June 30th on the publisher’s platform. Information about alternative ways to access articles can be found here:  http://openaccess.blogg.kb.se/bibsamkonsortiet/alternative-routes-to-scholarly-articles-and-research-outputs/ ..."