California State University / Elsevier Renewal Announcement

This article was written by CSU Libraries on January 21st, 2022.

We are pleased to announce that California State University has successfully finalized a three-year ScienceDirect contract with Elsevier. This renewal continues our positive negotiations and agreement terms that were first put into effect March of 2020.

The contract renewal allows for ongoing access to the Complete Collection and Cell Press Collection, our previous standard holdings and access to the CSU Access Collection (formerly Gratis List), as well as the Freedom Collection.

In effect, CSU students, faculty and staff have continued access to the CSU collection of Elsevier titles with negligible increased costs for the CSU libraries. This incredible news continues the practice of CSU authors retaining their transformative agreement option to publish their articles open access with no Author Processing Charges.  

Open Access for CSU Authors

The previous transformative contract allowed 564 corresponding author publications to be published Gold open access under CSU’s transformative agreement (out of 630 total accepted articles). This OA uptake, 89.5%, reflects one of the highest among Elsevier’s worldwide customer base and expands inclusive access to the outstanding scholarship by CSU Authors. As a public university system, the ability to partner with Elsevier and make our scholarship public and available to the world is an important act and value.

Over the next three years, CSU authors will continue to choose the copyright model they prefer. For authors who wish to publish open access, all Author Publishing Charges (APCs) will be waived for CSU corresponding authors whose articles are accepted by eligible Elsevier journals during the contract period (i.e., 2022-2024). There are no limits to the number of available APC waivers for CSU; exercising this option does not impact publishing decisions. Authors who opt to retain their copyright may select between a CC BY or CC BY-NC-ND license.

Cost

The CSU Libraries and Elsevier have come to an agreement that the renewal costs will increase 1% over the three-year contract. All CSU Contracts are subject to public disclosure via the CA Public Records Act.

Questions

Please contact your campus librarian with questions, and congratulations to CSU Libraries for their stewardship and advocacy of CSU authors and readers.