More on Elsevier and all that - Part 3

From Inside Higher Ed: Carnegie Mellon University and Elsevier Thursday announced a new agreement to radically change how the institution pays to read and publish research.

Instead of paying separately to access Elsevier’s catalog of paywalled content and publish open-access articles in Elsevier journals, Carnegie Mellon will pay one flat fee for both.

The deal means that starting on Jan. 1, 2020, all principal investigators publishing in Elsevier journals will have the option of making their research immediately available to the public, at no additional cost.

The “read-and-publish” deal is a first with a university in the U.S. for Elsevier and is the result of nearly yearlong negotiations. Elsevier struck a similar deal with a consortium of Norwegian research institutions earlier this year.

Like the Norwegian deal, the Carnegie Mellon deal is being treated as an experimental pilot by Elsevier, Keith Webster, dean of university libraries and director of emerging and integrative media initiatives at the university, said in an interview. The Carnegie Mellon deal is for four years, he said.

Read-and-publish deals are being pursued by some colleges and universities as a way to reduce journal subscription costs while boosting open-access publications. As more and more articles are published openly, fewer articles will be paywalled. Some open-access advocates say this approach could eventually eliminate paywalls altogether.

For Elsevier, the pivot to paying to publish rather than paying to read represents a fundamental shift in its business model -- one that the company has been seemingly hesitant to make.

Negotiations between Elsevier and the University of California System broke down earlier this year in part because the two parties could not reach an agreement on pricing. The university system was seeking a deal that would reduce costs and make open-access publications in Elsevier journals the default for UC authors unless they chose to opt out. The publisher said the UC system was seeking two services for the price of one...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/11/22/new-kind-big-deal-elsevier-and-carnegie-mellon-university

No word from UC as to whether the development above might lead to some kind of deal with Elsevier.