| GENERAL INFORMATION | |
| Publisher | Elsevier |
| Agreement ID | els2026cdl |
| Agreement labeling | Elsevier Transformative agreement |
| Is the agreement document publicly available? | Yes |
| URL | https://cdlib.org/services-groups/collections/ licensed_resources/ redacted_licenses/Elsevier%202026-2027%207th%20AoR%20SDOL%20Journals%20TA_Redacted.pdf |
| Agreement period | 1/1/2026 – 12/31/2027 |
| Consortia / Institution | California Digital Library (University of California) |
| Country | United States |
| COST | |
| How do the costs of the agreement relate to the previous agreement with the publisher? | Cost decrease |
| Comments on cost development | Base library cost decrease compared to previous agreement; fluctuations relating to publishing volume managed by multipayer model agreement structure. |
| Describe how the cost model has changed from the previous agreement (e.g., move from subscription to R&P / from capped to uncapped / from single APC payments to flat fee, etc.) | Mechanisms have been built to manage library cost fluctuations during the two-year agreement and hold library costs fixed for that time. |
| Read-access costs
If the agreement includes read access to subscription content, is a split of the cost between read access and publishing services defined? |
No |
| If a split of the cost between read access and publishing services is defined, what percentage of the overall agreement cost relates to read access? | 0% |
| PUBLISHING-RELATED TERMS | |
| Publication output
What is the approximate number of annual corresponding author publications from your institution/consortium with the publisher (in closed, hybrid and fully OA journals)? |
4000 |
| Is the agreement’s provision for OA publishing capped (e.g., limited to a specific number of articles per year) or uncapped? | Uncapped |
| Coverage
Are all journals relevant to your affiliated authors (i.e., journals in which you expect them to publish) eligible for OA publishing under the agreement? |
No |
| Are APC-based full open access journals covered by the agreement? | Yes, alongside hybrid titles |
| Are journals operating under other business models (S2O, Diamond OA, etc.) covered by the agreement? | No |
| Article types
Eligible article types |
Original research articles, Review articles, Proceedings, Short communications, Short surveys, Data in brief, Case reports, Microarticles, Original software publications, Video articles, Insights, Protocols |
| Risk sharing
What risk-sharing mechanisms exist in cases of exceeding or not reaching the anticipated number of OA publications under the agreement? |
A maximum/minimum payment corridor |
| Comments on publishing-related terms | The vast majority of Elsevier journals are eligible for OA publishing under this agreement (including Cell Press and The Lancet titles). Exceptions include cases where societies have opted out of participating in transformative agreements for their journals, and review journals that rely on invited contributions. |
| READ ACCESS-RELATED TERMS | |
| Coverage of read access
If the agreement includes read access to subscription content, is access to all relevant journals required by your users covered by the agreement? |
Yes |
| Perpetual access
If the agreement includes read access to subscription content, are perpetual access (post cancellation/termination) rights included? |
No |
| OA WORKFLOW | |
| Author workflow and verification
The date for articles’ eligibility is based on: |
Acceptance date |
| Describe the mechanisms used by the publisher for matching authors with an eligible institution: | PIDs (Ringgold, ROR, ORCID, etc.), Text-matching, Email domain verification |
| How do consortia or institutions verify author eligibility and approve OA funding? | Via publisher’s dashboard or third-party platform (pre-publication) |
| Does the agreement include mechanisms to correct mistakenly approved, missed, or not approved publications (e.g., retrospective OA conversion of closed articles or refunding paid APCs)? | Yes |
| Does the publisher’s reporting on publications satisfy the needs of your institution (frequency, metadata fields, data quality, etc.)? | Yes |
| May authors be charged additional publication fees (such as page charges, article development charges, etc.)? | Yes |
| Comments on additional publication fees | Authors are not required to pay any additional, mandatory publication fees or page charges. Fees for optional value-added services that are supplementary to publishing are allowed; such charges are invoiced separately from the open access fees and directly to the author. An exception is made for the small number of scholarly societies that had an existing (and usually long-standing) mandatory page or editorial charge as of the start date of our first agreement (April 1, 2021). |
| How would you assess the practical implementation of the agreement? | Ok |
| Comments on workflows | The agreement follows a “multipayer” model, under which financial support from the UC Libraries is supplemented with author contributions from research funds. Upon acceptance, authors are notified of the institutional agreement in Elsevier’s author portal. Authors are then presented with the option to publish under the agreement. All UC-affiliated corresponding authors receive 1) an automatic discount on the apc (15% for most journals, 10% for Cell Press and The Lancet journals); 2) an automatic $1000 contribution towards the APC; and 3) the option to request full coverage of the APC for authors without research funds to pay the remainder. Funding requests are routed to the Elsevier Open Access Portal dashboard for the institution to manage approvals. |
| PUBLISHING LICENSES | |
| Author’s licenses
Open access license types included |
CC BY preference, exceptions allowed |
| Has the author workflow been customized to direct authors to a certain license (e.g., by making the option for CC BY the preselected default)? | Yes |
| If the agreement covers licenses more restrictive than CC BY, do the License to Publish agreements (LtPs) offered to authors differ from the publisher’s standard LtP? | No |
| In addition to the OA publishing provision, does the agreement include mechanisms to make author accepted manuscripts open access? | No |
Request contact to the licensee: contact@esac-initiative.org
