University of California cancels deal with Elsevier after months of negotiations

"The University of California System has canceled its multimillion-dollar subscription contract with Elsevier, an academic publisher.

Other institutions have canceled their “big deal” journal subscription contracts with major publishers before. But none in the U.S. have the financial and scholarly clout of the UC system -- which accounts for nearly 10 percent of the nation's publishing output.

The cancellation, announced Thursday, is a blow to Elsevier, which is facing increasing pressure to change its largely subscription-based business model. Last year, hundreds of institutions in Germany and Sweden refused to sign a deal with Elsevier unless it agreed to fundamentally change the way it charges institutions to access and publish research.

UC has been pushing for a so-called read-and-publish deal with the company, which would offset the cost of open access publishing against the cost of access to subscription content. Lead negotiators for the system argue that this kind of deal will help publishers accelerate open-access publishing and eventually eliminate paywalls. Under such a deal, all UC research published in Elsevier journals would be immediately available to the public...."