Dear OSU Community:
When Oregon State University’s contract with Elsevier lapsed on January 1 of this year, following a decision by the university to suspend negotiations, the OSU community lost immediate subscription access to some paywalled Elsevier journals. After much consultation by our librarians with the Faculty Senate, academic leaders, and colleagues at other Oregon public universities, we concluded that a pause in negotiations was necessary to lay the groundwork for a more sustainable future for scholarly publishing.
Since the pause went into effect, OSU librarians have taken steps toward that more sustainable future. They include:
- Ensuring ongoing access to materials included in OSU’s Elsevier Subscribed Title list;
- Investing in tools that facilitate article-level access to paywalled resources to which OSU does not subscribe;
- Making open-access versions of research articles more discoverable; and
- Strategically upgrading non-Elsevier resources in the library’s collections.
Dean of Libraries Anne-Marie Deitering will host a one-hour town hall on February 27 from 4 to 5 p.m. via Zoom to share information about these actions, discuss the data the library has been gathering to inform future negotiations with Elsevier, and answer questions about the negotiations and the scholarly publishing landscape more broadly. Please register here to attend the meeting.
Sincerely,
Edward Feser
Provost and Executive Vice President