Setting a trend? Norway and Elsevier enter into a two-year transformation pilot agreement - OpenAIRE Blogs

"On April 23, Elsevier and the Norwegian Unit jointly issued a press release, announcing a two-year pilot agreement on access to research and open publishing. This news took many by surprise since Unit only the month before had announced its decision not to renew their agreement with Elsevier. This decision came after a lengthy period of negotiations and was not made lightly. We quickly got back to our talks with Elsevier, however, and were able to work out the details of the pilot in a very short time. The agreement is made up of a standard Science Direct Licence with an "Elsevier – Unit Open Access Pilot Terms" added at the end. The licence was signed with a confidentiality clause but stated that it is without prejudice to the applicable Norwegian public Act and Public Administration Act. Within a couple of days after announcing the agreement, a Request for Information came from a university paper claiming the right of these Acts. After consulting with Elsevier, the licence including the Open Access Terms was sent over, and duly published in the paper Khrono. We then published the licence on our website openaccces.no (we will also publish our agreement with Wiley shortly) and have registered both of them in the excellent ESAC registry.  ..."