Elsevier and SCELC Establish Partnership to Expand Open Access in Elsevier Journals

Elsevier, a global leader in information analytics and scientific publishing, is pleased to announce an innovative partnership with the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC) with a focus on open access. The read and publish transformative agreement, effective from January 2024 for all 37 participating SCELC members, signifies substantial advancement in open scholarship and community engagement while also providing critically important research content to students and researchers.

As a consortium dedicated to serving the unique and varied needs of its libraries, SCELC supports collective action that enables small and midsize libraries to benefit from open publishing agreements that would not be available or manageable individually. Elsevier and SCELC worked together collaboratively to enhance how we both support the SCELC community by adding open access publishing to our ScienceDirect journal package agreement. Hundreds of corresponding authors across one-third of SCELC member institutions now have the option to publish open access articles in more than 2400 hybrid or fully open access Elsevier journals. The agreement is expected to cover open publication charges for more than 400 articles per year. For more details, please see the agreement page opens in new tab/window.

Teri Oaks Gallaway, Executive Director of SCELC, said: “We are pleased to forge an agreement that enables our institutions to reallocate a significant portion of their Elsevier subscription dollars to facilitate open publication at no cost to authors and no additional cost to institutions. Our negotiations relied on cooperation and compromise on both sides and we are grateful for Elsevier’s creativity and flexibility throughout the process.”

James Tonna, VP Research Sales, Americas at Elsevier, added: “We are thrilled to collaborate with SCELC to advance in their goals and this transformative agreement marks a substantial stride toward a more inclusive research environment, nurturing innovation both for reading relevant content and publishing in high quality journals.”

About SCELC

SCELC is a library consortium composed of academic and research libraries in California, Texas and beyond. Currently, SCELC represents a diverse community of over 110 member libraries and over 230 affiliate institutions and organizations. In aggregate, SCELC libraries serve a student population of 500,000 and library budgets ofover $200 million. SCELC seeks to enhance scholarly resources and information for its member institutions and negotiate collective licensing agreements for electronic resources. SCELC’s read-and-publish open access agreements and renewals are guided by transformative agreement goals and values opens in new tab/window established as a priority by its member institutions.

About Elsevier

As a global leader in scientific information and analytics, Elsevier helps researchers and healthcare professionals advance science and improve health outcomes for the benefit of society. We do this by facilitating insights and critical decision-making with innovative solutions based on trusted, evidence-based content and advanced AI-enabled digital technologies.

We have supported the work of our research and healthcare communities for more than 140 years. Our 9,500 employees around the world, including 2,500 technologists, are dedicated to supporting researchers, librarians, academic leaders, funders, governments, R&D-intensive companies, doctors, nurses, future healthcare professionals and educators in their critical work. Our 2,900 scientific journals and iconic reference books include the foremost titles in their fields, including Cell Press, The Lancet and Gray’s Anatomy.

Together with the Elsevier Foundation opens in new tab/window, we work in partnership with the communities we serve to advance inclusion and diversity in science, research and healthcare in developing countries and around the world.

Elsevier is part of RELX opens in new tab/window, a global provider of information-based analytics and decision tools for professional and business customers. For more information on our work, digital solutions and content, visit www.elsevier.com.