UV: Relx hit as University of California cancels $11m contract

"Relx’ shares tumbled after the University of California cancelled its contract with the company’s publishing arm Elsevier, publicly accusing its business model of blocking free access to academic knowledge.

The University, which produces nearly 10 per cent of academic articles in the US, said it cancelled the $11m contract after Elsevier would not make its academic articles — previously accessible by subscription — freely available to anyone, without charging a fee....

The FTSE 100 group’s shares were down 6 per cent by mid afternoon on Friday....

Analysts from Liberum said the development offered a potentially significant risk to the Elsevier subscription model. “Given that research is concentrated among the major universities, if the latter demanded that their content be made available to all for free under the terms of their contracts, then — very quickly — most of the world’s articles would effectively be available for free, undermining the scientific publishing model,” they said...."