California’s showdown with Elsevier inspires US campuses | Times Higher Education (THE)

"The University of California’s hard-line bid to push publishing giant Elsevier towards open-access models is attracting widespread interest at other US universities where librarians are considering following suit.

Many librarians have expressed their support for California’s decision to cancel its $11 million (£8.4 million) a year subscription with the publishing giant, but are aware that they face their own tough decisions when their own “big deals” come up for renewal. For institutions including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, this will be at the end of 2019. ...

“We’re anxiously observing” the California situation, said Lorraine Haricombe, director of libraries at the University of Texas at Austin. “There’s a hunger for solutions to budgetary pressures” caused by high journal subscription prices, Dr Haricombe said. “But there’s also historical inertia that makes the sort of wholesale change to address that…a tough slog.”... "