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David Walker receives 2015 LITA/Library Hi Tech Award

From American Library Association

For Immediate Release
Tue, 03/17/2015

Contact:

Mary Taylor
Executive Director, Library and Information Technology Association (LITA)
312-280-4267 or mtaylor@ala.org

CHICAGO — David Walker has been named the winner of the 2015 LITA/Library Hi Tech Award for Outstanding Communication in Library and Information Technology.

Emerald Group Publishing and the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) sponsor the award that recognizes outstanding individuals or institutions for their long-term contributions in the area of Library and Information Science technology and its application.

Walker is being recognized for his dedication and commitment in developing the open source library portal application Xerxes over the past decade. Originally designed as an improved interface to the Ex Libris Metalib federated search system in 2004, Xerxes now supports a variety of back-end search engines, including commercial library discovery systems, such as Primo, EDS, Summon, non-cost web service (EBSCO Integration Toolkit, Worldcat API) and other search engines (Solr, Google Appliance).  Through this effort, Walker has worked with a variety of vendors to develop and test their application programming interfaces and has been recognized by OCLC and Ex Libris for innovative uses of their services.  In 2007 Walker released the system under an open source license, and today, Xerxes platform is implemented by over 40 institutions around the globe, with some also contributing code back to the project.

Walker said, “These days, academic libraries are increasingly opting for hosted discovery systems and library services platforms.  It’s still vitally important that libraries retain responsibility for the interfaces we present users, and explore new and creative ways to integrate library content and services into learning management systems and other online spaces, which cannot be easily achieved by vendor discovery systems or services platforms.  Xerxes continues to provide a flexible and open source platform to explore such projects, regardless of the underlying discovery system or library services platform.”

Currently, Walker serves as director of systemwide digital library services at the California State University (CSU), Office of the Chancellor.  In this capacity, he oversees a systemwide discovery system, link resolver and institutional repository service for all 23 CSU campuses.  His recent work has focused on moving the CSU libraries from a disparate and disconnected set of local ILS and ERM systems toward a consortium library services platform, as well as exploring integration of library systems and services with learning management systems.

Walker received his MLIS from UCLA.  As a librarian, programmer and interface designer, he has led and contributed to a number of open source initiatives in the library community, including developing scripts, plugins, and interface designs for the SFX link resolver, Innovative ILS systems and other library services.

The Library and Information Technology Association and Emerald, the publisher of Library Hi Tech, are pleased to present the 2015 LITA/Library Hi Tech Award to David Walker for his outstanding contributions to communication in library science and technology.  The award will be presented during Sunday Afternoon with LITA on June 28, 2015, at the ALA Annual Conference in San Francisco.

About LITA

Established in 1966, LITA is the leading organization reaching out across types of libraries to provide education and services for a broad membership including systems librarians, library administrators, library technologists, library schools, vendors and many others interested in leading edge technology and applications for librarians and information providers.  For more information about LITA go to www.lita.org, or contact the LITA office by phone, 800-545-2433, ext. 4268; or e-mail: lita@ala.org

About Emerald

Emerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,500 books and book series volumes. It also provides an extensive range of value-added products, resources and services to support its customers’ needs. Emerald is COUNTER 4 compliant. Emerald is also a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. It also works in close collaboration with a number of organizations and associations worldwide.

The Freedom to Read is Essential to the Mission of the California State University

Posted by on Sep 23, 2023 in Stories | Comments Off on The Freedom to Read is Essential to the Mission of the California State University

The 23 California State University libraries are united in their commitment to supporting the freedom to read as well as the freedom to learn, teach, and create new knowledge in an environment where challenges to those freedoms are increasing throughout the United States.

According to the American Library Association, there were 1,269 documented attempts to censor or otherwise limit access to books or other resources in U.S. libraries in 2022, representing a 74% increase in censorship attempts since 2021 and “the highest number of attempted book bans since ALA began compiling data about censorship in libraries more than 20 years ago.” According to PEN America, organized efforts to ban books in school libraries and public libraries overwhelmingly target stories by and about people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals and reflect broader efforts to limit the ability for students to learn about race, racism, sexuality, gender, or other topics as part of their public education.

While national attention has been drawn to systemic censorship efforts in states including FloridaLouisiana, and Texas, California has not been immune from efforts to censor library materials or limit access to instruction on certain topics in our schools, e.g., efforts to limit access to LGBTQ+ materials in the San Diego Public Library, and a decision, later reversed, by the Temecula Valley Unified School Board to reject a state-approved social studies curriculum owing to its inclusion of information about slain California gay-rights activist (and member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors) Harvey Milk.

As the American Library Association and its partners among the publishing community argued more than 70 years ago in their Freedom to Read Statement, “[the] freedom to read is essential to our democracy,” and, now as then, it is under attack.

For more than 50 years, the California State University has been a leader in learning, scholarship, and community engagement dedicated to exploring the history of our diverse community and to ensuring a better future for all members of our community, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual identity.

The CSU is the largest and most diverse four-year institution of higher education in the United States, providing “more than half of all undergraduate degrees earned by California’s Latinx, African American and Native American students combined.” Of our 23 campuses, 21 are recognized as Hispanic-Serving Institutions and 14 are recognized as Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions.

And, while individual CSU campuses have been national leaders in teaching, learning, and research in areas such as Africana Studies and Chicana and Chicano Studies for decades, we are now united in supporting the state-wide requirements for General Education in Ethnic Studies. CSU campuses were also among the first in the nation to develop programs in Women’s Studies and today all 23 CSU campuses house women’s resource centers as well as LGBTQ+ centers. The core commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice is fundamental to our system and to the plans and aspirations of our campuses and libraries.

Given this historic commitment to the freedom to teach and the freedom to learn about all subjects, including those increasingly challenged as inappropriate for inclusion in library collections or instructional programs, the California State University libraries join their colleagues in academic, public, and school libraries across the United States in re-asserting our commitment to the core values of librarianship, including diversity, intellectual freedom, social responsibility, and the public good. 

The freedoms to read, write, inquire, learn, and create are essential to the mission of the California State University and fundamental elements of a free, informed, and educated citizenry in the State of California. 

Together, we will continue to build collections, provide public programs, and pursue campus and community partnerships that promote those freedoms, reflect those values, and extend the reach and impact of academic and co-curricular programs designed to strengthen an inclusive, just, and democratic society. 

Please contact your campus library with any questions or to learn more about your campus library’s policies on collection development or on challenges to the inclusion of any material in your library collection.

CSU Partners with UC, SCELC, and ACS to Advance First California-wide Transformative Open Access Agreement

Posted by on May 18, 2022 in Stories | Comments Off on CSU Partners with UC, SCELC, and ACS to Advance First California-wide Transformative Open Access Agreement

Three California consortia, representing nearly 60 academic and research institutions, and the Publications Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) today announced the first-ever California-wide transformative open access agreement. It is also ACS’ first “read and publish” agreement in the U.S. composed of multiple consortia.

Through a partnership with the 10-campus University of California (UC) system, the 23-campus California State University (CSU) system, and 25 subscribing institutions represented by the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC), readers and researchers at dozens of California research institutions will be able to benefit from full access to subscription content while receiving support for open access publication in ACS’ portfolio of more than 75 premier chemistry journals.

See the ACS news release for more information.

California State University / Elsevier Renewal Announcement

Posted by on Jan 21, 2022 in Stories | Comments Off on California State University / Elsevier Renewal Announcement

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.

2021 CSU/Elsevier Science Direct Negotiation

Posted by on Jan 18, 2022 in Stories | Comments Off on 2021 CSU/Elsevier Science Direct Negotiation

2021 CSU/Elsevier Science Direct Negotiation

Why do we need to find a different approach with Elsevier?

In short, because the existing spending on Elsevier is disproportionately large compared to other academic publishers and is unsustainable for the CSU Libraries.  

Elsevier, like most other academic publishers, has built a business model underwritten by publicly-funded research, faculty scholarship, faculty peer review, and faculty editorial board management. Elsevier then charges libraries annual or multi-year subscription fees to buy access to journals and scholarly materials that exist only because of the public research funding and faculty work effort. This business model leverages scholarly standards and expectations deeply entrenched in academia, including the very important Promotion and Tenure process that requires faculty to publish in highly ranked journals in order to achieve tenure and get promoted subsequently. 

As libraries, we have been entrusted by our university community to acquire access to high quality scholarly material that enables scholarship and knowledge creation and supports the aforementioned scholarly standards and expectations. The publications of Elsevier and other scholarly publishers (e.g. SAGE, Springer, IEE, etc.) are fully aligned with this mission. As such academic libraries depend on Elsevier and other publishers to fulfill this mission.

Where things get complicated is when we look at the amount the CSU spends on Elsevier. The breakdown in the table below shows how the CSU combined spending on Elsevier exceeds the cumulative spending on the next three most expensive academic packages.

database cost comparison for 2020/2021. Elsevier: $3,949,133.  Top three databases after Elsevier: $3,538,875.

To be clear, these numbers do not measure usage, access, or productivity based on these vendors. It simply serves to illustrate how outsized the relative cost of the Elsevier package is. Further, this complaint about the cost of Elsevier is not limited to the CSU. Our colleagues in the UC system have also renegotiated their Elsevier deal. Similarly, university libraries all across North America have also had to completely renegotiate their Elsevier packages. For further information, please have a look at Ithaka S+R’s recently published study entitled: “What’s the Big Deal?” and how libraries are faring post cancelation of the big publisher packages.

In 2011-2012, the CSU spend for the package was $2,711,923.  In less than 10 years, we’re looking at an increase of over $1 million.

Why does it matter?

Collections budgets in libraries are limited and consistently under pressure. Spending collection funds is an exercise in deciding about what to purchase and what not to buy. The opportunity cost imposed by an unnecessarily expensive journal package leads CSU libraries to purchase fewer other scholarly resources, thereby greatly hampering the ability of the libraries to support emerging fields and inhibiting a diverse representation of ideas and research. Less access to research is bad for science. For more insight into the current landscape of academic publishing, see the free documentary, Paywall: The Business of Scholarship.

What we would like changed in our Elsevier package?

While we recognize the value of academic publishers such as Elsevier, we have come to a point where the cost to maintain our Elsevier deal is unsustainable. What were once well priced products have become unaffordable due to consistent annual increases in the cost of these packages. Compounding these increases over many years, has increased the cost of our Elsevier deal to a point where it exceeds the CSU Libraries collective ability to maintain our Elsevier package. This is the time to design a working model for read institutions; one where we partner with Elsevier in making our faculty’s research available via OA and access is available to all of our campuses. As such we are requesting a reset of the Elsevier package to be in line with the cost of our other packages and subscriptions. The new cost should be affordable while allowing Elsevier acceptable annual increases. While there may be some negotiations around content,  the Open Access agreement continues to be a high priority. 

Textbooks in the Library Collection

Posted by on Jul 6, 2020 in Stories | Comments Off on Textbooks in the Library Collection

The 23 California State University Libraries share the statement below as articulating the constraints we face in providing service to the students that is our mission.  While the Affordable Learning Solutions initiative promotes the adoption of low or no cost materials, students may still find themselves unable to pay for essential reading.  When instruction is on campus, libraries can provide short-term access to textbook and other resources through course reserves. To replicate this in a virtual environment, major publishers would need to allow libraries to purchase digital versions of textbooks, which they currently do not. The publishers’ failure to do so deprives students who cannot afford a personal digital edition of the resources essential to their pursuit of an education.  We thank our colleagues at the University of Guelph Libraries who shared their challenges and the librarians at Grand Valley State University for their eloquent statement.

Grand Valley State University’s

Statement on Textbooks in the Library Collection

As we approach the fall 2020 semester, library faculty and staff are working hard to provide alternative access to the print course reserves collection. A significant portion of the books on reserve are print copies of required textbooks, and students cannot access them without coming into the library. Library faculty and staff have continuously explored approaches to how we acquire course textbooks, to ensure that students have access, even in a hyflex, distance delivery environment.

This work is complicated by textbook publishers who do not provide electronic purchasing options for libraries. Many existing course textbooks are simply unavailable to any library, regardless of budget, in formats other than print. Textbook publishers have built their profit models around selling e-textbooks directly to students. We also know that the cost of textbooks and other course materials are a barrier for students at every university and essentially sends taxpayer funded student financial aid back to content providers, who further exploit faculty labor and research to monopolize and dominate knowledge production.

This is not a library problem. This is an industry problem that impacts everyone in higher education: students, advocates in support and success roles, faculty and institutional research output, grant funding, and confuses prestige and paywalls with quality in scholarship evaluation.

Despite the library’s commitment to make copies of all required textbooks and course materials available to assist those students who are unable to purchase their own, the following publishers will not allow us to purchase an e-textbook version of their publications:

  • Pearson
  • Cengage
  • McGraw Hill
  • Oxford University Press
  • Most publishers of ‘common reads,’ popular fiction, and popular nonfiction
  • Many health sciences texts

This means that in courses that have adopted textbooks by these publishers, students who do not purchase the textbook will not have any alternative access to the textbook content. These publishers have the resources to support a global reliance on flexible distribution, and choose not to.

We are working with instructors to explore and identify viable textbook alternatives, including:

  • Using an existing e-book in the relevant subject area from the library’s e-book collection or requesting that the library purchase one. Many academic e-books that aren’t considered textbooks, and are therefore available for the library to purchase.
  • Adopting an open educational resource (OER). OERs are freely available educational materials that are openly licensed to allow for re-use and modification by instructors.
  • Creating an online course pack in Blackboard by:
    • Posting individual book chapters or excerpts and scanned copies of the content, subject to copyright limitations.
    • Linking to content from the library’s existing collection of electronic resources (e-books, journal articles, streaming media, and other digital materials).

Efforts will be made to secure online materials that are free from digital rights management restrictions (DRM) in order to ensure unfettered student access. DRM includes limits on the number of users that can access a resource at any one time, as well as limits on copying, printing and downloading.

CSU Library Questions?

Contact your CSU Library Dean

California State University Libraries Response to COVID-19

Posted by on Mar 27, 2020 in Stories | Comments Off on California State University Libraries Response to COVID-19

The 23 California State University (CSU) Libraries are providing expanded support for our students and faculty as we move to a virtual instruction environment. While some steps are purely local, two critical measures result from a system-wide collaboration:

  1. provision of a rich array of expanded, full-text databases and
  2. an extension of library circulation due dates for library materials (books, media, hardware, and more) and dismissal of library fines for continuing students, faculty, staff, and community users.

Your local CSU Library is engaged in expanded virtual teaching and research support (digitizing collections, equipment lending, online instruction or research help, and more). See the links below for more information from your specific campus library regarding services or how to safely access or return materials.

Expanded Collections

A significant number of publishers have provided all 23 CSU libraries with expanded access to a substantial number of digital textbooks, electronic journals, and e-books during the current pandemic. This centrally-managed work is testament to the power of the CSU library consortium. The CSU Libraries have activated these resources centrally in our Unified Library Management System so that they are available to all of our students and faculty, effective immediately. Please check your library catalog to see what new resources have been added during this time as we work to make these materials discoverable. We do not expect that they will be available past the end of May, but we are glad that these grants of access make it easier for our students and faculty to complete their research during this stressful time. They may not be able to enter the physical building, but the digital library just became much bigger.

The publishers whose expanded resources we have activated include JSTOR, Project MUSE, IEEE, Sage Video, JoVE, Emerald, and others. Do note, that at some point in the future access will be shut off. Our ability to connect to this content is due to vendors stepping up and helping higher education during this challenging time. Details on available titles can be found on your library’s link below.

Expanded due dates / No fines

As we shelter-in-place we do not want our students, faculty, staff, or community users to worry about returning materials to their library. Your safety is our priority; therefore, your local CSU Library will adjust all due dates so that you do not incur any fines.

All CSU Library due dates are extended to August 31, 2020.

If you are graduating this spring or summer, you may need to return your library materials before your paperwork can be finalized. Please contact your local library via email to determine the appropriate way to return items.

COVID-19 Response
CSU Library Informational Sources

CSU / Elsevier ScienceDirect Renewal Supports the Future of Research in California

Posted by on Mar 9, 2020 in Stories | Comments Off on CSU / Elsevier ScienceDirect Renewal Supports the Future of Research in California

We are pleased to announce that the California State University has finalized a two-year ScienceDirect contract with Elsevier. In this impactful move, the CSU Libraries have agreed to a Read and Publish-Plus agreement with substantial savings, additional content, and a vision that moves the CSU Libraries and Elsevier towards a new model of academic publishing.

This agreement offers excellent content for a fair price, purposefully equalizes access across all 23 campuses, and sets the stage for the CSU faculty to more fully engage in Open Access publishing in ways that make sense for them and their fields of research.

See UC Statement in support of CSU.

COST

The CSU Libraries and Elsevier have come to an agreement that the renewal costs will increase 1.5% for both 2020 and 2021 — a significant reduction from previous years. The final percentages will be lower in light of a subscription rebalancing reduction. The full contract will soon be available at CALUSOURCE, where all California public higher education systems contracts are accessible by authorized users. Additionally, agreements are subject to public disclosure via the CA Public Records Act.

CONTENT: Increased access & equity of access

The 2020/2021 two-year contract increases access two ways:

  • Access to the Complete Collection and Cell Press Collection, our previous standard holdings and Access to the CSU Access Collection (formerly Gratis List) at no additional cost
  • New access to the Freedom Collection at no additional cost

AUTHORS’ CHOICE FOR EXPANDED ACCESS

CSU authors will continue to be able to choose the copyright model they prefer. For authors who wish to go Open Access, all Author Publishing Charges (APCs) will be waived in both 2020 and 2021 for CSU corresponding authors. This option is unlimited and does not impact publishing decisions.

VENDOR NEGOTIATIONS; INCLUDING AND BEYOND ELSEVIER

The California State University and the University of California are building a partnership in line with the Master Plan for Higher Education in California that affirms the values of both institutions in providing our communities and taxpayers with unfettered access to our academic output. Combined, we are the largest academic system in the U.S. and possibly the world. In the future and when possible, the priorities of affordable access to information and open access will be approached as a state-wide endeavor and may include partnerships with Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC), who represents nearly all private academic institutions in California, and other California institutions as well.

Update on California State Libraries negotiations with Elsevier

Posted by on Jan 2, 2020 in Stories | Comments Off on Update on California State Libraries negotiations with Elsevier

See Previous Elsevier FAQs

 

The CSU Libraries are negotiating terms of renewal with the publisher Elsevier, one of the world’s largest scientific, technical, and medical information publishers. These negotiations have carried forward into 2020.

The CSU contract expired on December 31, 2019. As we continue our negotiations in good faith, we do not expect any change in access. The CSU Libraries understand the importance of this journal package to our researchers and students.

These negotiations are more involved than in previous years because the CSU Libraries, like most of our academic library peers, are looking to negotiate lower-cost and transformative agreements with journal publishers. Our goal is to help make public research more accessible to the taxpayers who make it possible.

As we continue conversations about scholarly publications & creative activities and the many formats these practices can take, we reaffirm that faculty have full ownership over how they choose to publish.

  • At no point will any library contract require an author to agree to an Open Access contract or to pay an Author (or Article) Publishing Charges
  • Libraries support authors’ research and scholarship and will not dictate where an author can publish or in what format.

Should you have any questions, please contact your local University Library Dean

California State University Libraries to change the display of the subject heading “Illegal Aliens” in joint public catalog

Posted by on Dec 2, 2019 in Stories | Comments Off on California State University Libraries to change the display of the subject heading “Illegal Aliens” in joint public catalog

The California State University library faculty and staff agree with a resolution adopted in 2016 by the Library of Congress, which states that “the terms ‘illegal’ and ‘alien,’ when used in reference to people, have undergone pejoration and acquired derogatory connotations, becoming increasingly associated with nativist and racist sentiments.” As such, they are no longer appropriate for unbiased library cataloging that respects and reflects our diverse society.

Therefore, in the Unified Library Management System (ULMS) shared by the CSU Libraries, all instances of the subject heading “aliens” will be remapped to display “noncitizens,” and the subject heading “illegal aliens” will be remapped to display “undocumented immigrants.” The older terms will continue to be searchable, but the new terms will be used in all public records. This change will go into effect in January 2020.

Background

In 2016, in response to requests from a student group and university librarians at Dartmouth College and the American Library Association (ALA), the Library of Congress (LC) decided to revise and update the subject heading “Illegal aliens.” It is not uncommon for biased subject headings to be reformed, in line with changing social norms and language use. The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services, a division of the American Library Association (ALA), recommended “Noncitizens” and “Undocumented immigrants” as alternative subjects to “Aliens” and “Illegal aliens.” In response, for the first time ever, the House of Representatives objected to a decision regarding subject headings and ordered LC to continue using the term “Illegal aliens.”

Elsevier FAQs

Posted by on Oct 15, 2019 in Stories | Comments Off on Elsevier FAQs

The situation: It is time for the California State University Libraries to renew their contract with Elsevier, one of the world’s largest scientific, technical, and medical information publishers. Elsevier provides libraries with bundles of online journal subscriptions via its ScienceDirect platform.

CSU’s Elsevier subscription (a bundled package known in the industry as a Big Deal) is purchased through the Chancellor’s Office (CO). The subscription package includes 1,441 current journal titles of the 3,412 that Elsevier markets. Additionally, to support local needs, some libraries supplement this Big Deal with additional subscriptions to Elsevier journals not included in the CO Bundle.

Do CSU faculty and researchers use all the titles in the CSU subscription?

No. Most CSU campuses have downloaded zero articles from many Elsevier journals. The majority of CSU campus users download articles that we purchased in prior years. Fewer than 25% of downloads are from current materials. A good analogy is cable television where subscribers pay for channels they never watch.

Why is this a problem?

Like other publishing platforms, Elsevier has built a business model underwritten by publicly-funded research, faculty scholarship, faculty peer review, and faculty editorial board management. Elsevier then charges libraries annual or multiyear subscription fees to buy access to journals that exist only because of the public research funding and faculty work effort. This business model has rewarded Elsevier with a profit margin reported at 36% — higher than Apple, Google, or Amazon reported for the same year.

This profit margin has been sustained by the steady increase in subscription rates charged to academic libraries. According to the American Library Association, “Rapidly rising journal subscription prices have severely eroded the ability of libraries, universities, and scholars to purchase the publications necessary for research and education. While the Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased 73% between 1986-2004, research library expenditures for serials increased 273%. Since then, annual price index reports by the trade magazine Library Journal document the continued inexorable increase in serials costs, almost always in excess of the CPI.”The relentless rise in subscription costs for Elsevier and other online journal bundles has serious ramifications. The escalating costs mean that over time, CSU libraries have purchased fewer titles, greatly hampering the ability of the libraries to support emerging fields and inhibiting a diverse representation of ideas and research. Less access to research is bad for science. For more insight into the current landscape of academic publishing, see the free documentary, Paywall: The Business of Scholarship.

How much does Elsevier charge CSU libraries for their subscriptions?

In 2019, Elsevier charged the CSU system $3,949,602 for its subscription to current journals in ScienceDirect, a 4.25% increase over the previous year. Elsevier subscription costs are shared among the CSU libraries and comprise a significant portion of the annual acquisitions budget for every library in the system.

Do CSU faculty publish with Elsevier?

Yes. According to ScienceDirect, CSU authors published 8,680 articles in Elsevier journals from 2010 to 2019.

Are CSU authors charged a fee for publishing Open Access articles in Elsevier journals?

Some faculty want the articles they write to be available for free, that is via open access, instead of behind a subscription paywall. To make an article available via open access, Elsevier imposes an Article Publishing Charge (APC) of approximately $3,000 (depending on the journal) on authors. Under the APC model, Elsevier profits, in effect, twice from publicly-supported educational institutions by (1) charging for subscriptions which limit access to these journals to subscribers and (2) imposing APCs that authors or other funders pay if they seek to make their research publicly available.

In 2018, CSU authors published approximately 1,100 articles in Elsevier journals. Only a small number of these articles were published as open access. Collectively, it would have cost the CSU system approximately $3.3 million to make all of the Elsevier articles published by CSU authors freely available to all readers—even though, in many cases, the articles were funded by public research grants and written and edited by faculty at publicly-supported universities. These APC costs would have been on top of annual subscription fees paid by the CSU for access to ScienceDirect.

What can we do about this?

We can use the collective power of the CSU system to negotiate a better deal for our faculty and students. The University of California libraries were able to take a strong negotiating position with Elsevier because the UC Faculty supported their libraries. If the CSU Faculty likewise support the possibility that the CSU Libraries could walk away from the Elsevier contract, we are then in a strong negotiating position with Elsevier. We can push Elsevier hard for a transformative agreement that reduces subscription costs, limits annual price increases, and moves toward a model that allows CSU authors to make their work more widely available in open access.

What can YOU do about this?

Are you willing to support the CSU Libraries? This may mean the CSU Libraries will refuse to pay subscription costs for overpriced journals and databases until we can come to a more conducive agreement. The UCs ended their negotiations with Elsevier. In the aftermath, the UC libraries successfully negotiated a transformative, open-access, agreement with Cambridge University Press in which the universities will see no significant overall increase to the cost of its contract. In the Cambridge agreement, UC faculty retain their copyright, and UC faculty will have the option of publishing their articles open access with APCs subsidized either by faculty from their grant funding or by the UC libraries.

The impact of the CSU walking away from renewing with Elsevier would be largely limited to losing access to future publishing. Because the CSUs paid for “perpetual rights” in previous contracts, we retain perpetual access to most of the Elsevier articles to which we had access under those contracts. CSU faculty, students, and staff still have access and can download those articles.

We have the potential to change the power dynamics, to give faculty rights to what they have authored, and to ensure that taxpayers and citizens all over the world have access to scholarly research. All we ask is that our faculty support us as we begin an honest and difficult conversation with a company that cares more about its bottom line than it does about making knowledge open and available to all.