UC Libraries' Negotiations With Elsevier

December 22, 2003 Update from the Office of Systemwide Planning for Libraries and Scholarly Communication

The University of California libraries are negotiating with Reed Elsevier over the terms of online access to the company's scholarly journals after our license expires on December 31, 2003. The negotiations continue and are being conducted in good faith by all parties who share the hope that they will be concluded soon.

The immediate challenge is to determine a deal that ensures instantaneous access to the most vital journals at a price that is affordable in these difficult economic times. We have two broad options in the current negotiations. One is to renew a systemwide subscription to the titles in Science Direct Online that the UC libraries have historically subscribed to. This is the option we have chosen in the past. It enables the UC community to enjoy instantaneous access to some 1,100 Elsevier journals. However, cost is a major consideration. The base subscription is expensive and will increase annually at a time when library budgets will not. Lowering costs requires a longer-term contractual obligation than may be prudent.

A second option is to negotiate for access to a dramatically reduced subset of Elsevier titles that we determine to be essential to support the UC's research and teaching. Not all journals receive the same use at the UC, or provide as essential support to our research and teaching. The difficulty with this option is that per-title costs will inevitably be higher. Any real savings will require cuts of 50 percent or more in the number of titles that can be made accessible. No one would be entirely cut off from accessing Elsevier journals if we pursue this option, and the UC libraries would continue to provide interlibrary loans where possible. Additionally, articles required immediately and those not accessible via interlibrary loan would be available to individuals from Elsevier, which maintains a pay-per-view service.

We are thinking more broadly about the deeper structural problems. The economics of scholarly journal publishing are incontrovertibly unsustainable. Unless we change the current model, academic libraries and universities will be unable to continue providing faculty, students, and staff with access to the world's scholarship and knowledge. Scholars will be unable to make the results of their research widely available.

These are not statements about any single company, about the strengths and weaknesses of for- and not-for-profit publishing, or about the prospects of open-access versus subscription-based journal models. They are merely observations about economic reality. The unit cost of scholarly journals has increased 200 percent between 1986 and 2002 when the Consumer Price Index rose 50 percent. Some of this growth undoubtedly reflects the knowledge explosion. Some may reflect inefficiencies in the market. In any case, we are paying a great deal more to access an ever-shrinking portion of the world's knowledge. If we are to halt or even reverse this trend, we must aggressively ramp up and institutionalize our efforts to change the scholarly communications process. Institutions such as Harvard University and Cornell University are grappling with these same issues.

In this light, both the UC libraries and the Systemwide Senate Leadership are taking action. The UC libraries are working aggressively to change the current model of scholarly communication through the following actions:

• Stretch collections dollars by acting consortially to license online journals.
• Inform themselves and faculty colleagues about the dimensions and possible ways of addressing the crisis in the economics of scholarly publishing.
• Support alternative means for publishing scholarly materials that make high-quality peer-reviewed publications available at an affordable price.

In the years ahead, our work (described along with periodic updates at the University of California Libraries web site) will be accelerated and expanded.

The Academic Senate has recently announced in the Senate Source, December 2003 the establishment of a Special Committee on Scholarly Communication. It will soon evaluate key aspects of the problem and recommend additional practical ways for the University to take action.

We appreciate the value contributed voluntarily to scholarly publishing by scholars (as authors, reviewers, and editors), by libraries (who safeguard the scholarly record), and by publishers. Yet while we appreciate the value that publishers add, we question its price tag. At a time when so many U.S. universities are fundamentally re-thinking how they can continue to support high-quality research and teaching, it would be irresponsible not to.

It is against this broader and even more unsettling context that our negotiations with Elsevier are taking place. We ask for your continued patience and support. We will keep you informed about the progress of our immediate negotiations as well as the programs that are established to secure the publishing foundations upon which scholarship is based. Whatever the outcome of the present negotiations, the Academic Senate and the UC librarians are committed to evaluating scholarly communications, and finding the most cost-effective methods of making faculty work and scholarly work available to the world.

11/26/03 Update from Office of Systemwide Planning for Libraries and Scholarly Communication

As of this writing good faith negotiations between the University of California Libraries and Elsevier for a systemwide subscription to ScienceDirect Online are continuing.

Negotiations will result in either a systemwide subscription to Science Direct Online that is acceptably affordable for the short term or in access to a highly selective set of journals. The libraries remain hopeful that it will be the former.

The libraries are grateful for the level of support and engagement from UC faculty in this negotiation. Regardless of the outcome of the negotiation the hard work to create more sustainable models for scholarly communication will remain. The libraries, faculty and senior administrators must remain committed to strategic planning and action that address the unsustainable nature of the current dominant models. Such efforts must extend well beyond the results of a single negotiation for scholarly content, whose results by definition are limited in scope and time.

The libraries are working to extend programmatic efforts for addressing scholarly communication challenges. Readers are encouraged to consult the "Reshaping Scholarly Communication" section of the UC Libraries web site to discover the range of issues, challenges, and related UC activities and analysis.

The University libraries are currently negotiating with Elsevier to renew our systemwide subscription to ScienceDirect Online a database of approximately 1,500 journals concentrated in science, technology, and medicine but with some titles in social sciences and economics.

Under the terms of the current agreement, the systemwide subscription costs the UC libraries $8 million per year (1/7th of the libraries' total materials budget). Although ScienceDirect is an important scholarly resource, its cost is not aligned with its value. For example, ScienceDirect consumes 50% of the libraries' budget for their online journal collection, represents 32% of the titles in the collection, and receives 25% of the use.

Elsevier, a company with healthy profit margins (their net profits were up 43% in 2002 from the previous year, according to The Wall Street Journal, February 21, 2003) has publicly stated that subscription prices to journals in ScienceDirect Online will increase on average by 6.5% in 2004. At this annual rate, a further five-year subscription would cost the University $47.8 million and force its libraries to find an additional $7.8 million to retain access to the same Elsevier titles that faculty enjoy online today.

In negotiating subscription renewal, the University libraries seek to retain access to ScienceDirect Online but on terms that are sustainable: that do not, for example, inflate annually at 3 times the rate of inflation. Should negotiations fail at the systemwide level, campus libraries would acquire print subscriptions to selected Elsevier journal titles.

The libraries' negotiating strategy was encouraged by the Systemwide Library and Scholarly Information Advisory Committee (SLASIAC - a cross-campus, multi-constituency committee appointed by and reporting to the Provost). In a resolution passed in April 2003 SLASIAC urged libraries in the long-term interest of the University, "to review and renegotiate contracts with publishers whose pricing practices are unsustainable", even though such negotiations might result in their having to cut titles from the collection.

Support for the strategy was voiced by the Systemwide Senate Leadership in a letter signed by the Chair of the Academic Council and circulated to UC faculty on October 15, 2003. The Council of Chancellors have also endorsed the general strategy and agreed that campuses would not negotiate independently with Elsevier for ScienceDirect Online should the University fail to reach agreement for a systemwide license.