University of California leads fight over access to research

"Behind closed doors, the University of California is staging a revolt against the world’s largest journal publisher, threatening to drop all subscriptions when its contract with Reed Elsevier soon expires.

This is no pointy-headed dispute: Publication is how new discoveries are shared, building the foundation for future intellectual breakthroughs.

The university was poised to lose access to Elsevier’s journals when its five-year contract ends on Dec. 31.  But on Friday [12/21] afternoon, the adversaries agreed to extend the deadline for one more month.

If an agreement is not reached, everyone in the UC system — 21,200 faculty and 251,700 students — could face tighter access to new research findings. (Access to older articles would continue uninterrupted.) The university’s library says it would work to get them through other means, such as a loan from a non-UC library...."