Championing Change in Journal Negotiations - Office of Scholarly Communication

"Because the lion’s share of both the University’s research output and of our library budgets is bound up with the services of journal publishers, advancing these goals is inextricably entwined with the University’s ongoing relationships with publishers and must be addressed in the context of the agreements we sign with them.  Our goal, simply put, is to responsibly transition funding for journal subscriptions toward funding for open dissemination.  As we approach major journal negotiations for 2019, the UC system will be guided by the principles and goals outlined below in negotiating agreements with publishers.

In issuing this Call to Action, SLASIAC, UCOLASC, and the UC Council of University Librarians seek to engage the entire UC academic community, and indeed all stakeholders in the scholarly communication enterprise, in this journey of transformation....

For more than a decade, the University of California has institutionalized its commitment to open research dissemination with multiple statements, policies, and initiatives, in furtherance of its distinctive mission to serve society and translate research into knowledge and innovations that positively impact California, the nation, and the world.  Among the many actions designed to advance scholarly communication have been the adoption of faculty senate and presidential policies mandating the open deposit of research articles, and the development of an increasingly robust open access publishing capability on the California Digital Library’s eScholarship platform.  More recently, six UC campuses and their faculty-led Academic Senates have declared their commitment to making open access the default mode of research dissemination by supporting the OA2020 initiative, and other UC campuses are actively considering this support.  The faculty-led University Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication (UCOLASC) has also issued a Declaration of Rights and Principles to Transform Scholarly Communication for negotiating journal licenses with publishers.  And the UC Libraries have released Pathways to OA as a unified conceptual and strategic framework to guide future actions.  All of these efforts provide the context in which we will pursue open access to the journal literature and a broader transformation in scholarly communication....

Strategic Priorities for Journal Negotiations

1. We will prioritize making immediate open access publishing available to UC authors as part of our negotiated agreements.
2. We will prioritize agreements that lower the cost of research access and dissemination, with sustainable, cost-based fees for OA publication.  Payments for OA publication should reduce the cost of subscriptions at UC and elsewhere.
3. We will prioritize agreements with publishers who are transparent about the amount of APC-funded content within their portfolios, and who share that information with customers as well as the public.
4. We will prioritize agreements that enable UC to achieve expenditure reductions in our licenses when necessary, without financial penalty.
5. We will prioritize agreements that make any remaining subscription content available under terms that fully reflect academic values and norms, including the broadest possible use rights.
6. We will prioritize agreements that allow UC to share information about the open access provisions with all interested stakeholders, and we will not agree to non-disclosure requirements in our licenses.
7. We will prioritize working proactively with publishers who help us achieve a full transition to open access in accordance with the principles and pathways articulated by our faculty and our libraries...."