(November 2018)
Elsevier calls itself information and analytics company. It was established in 1880 as a publishing company. Headquartered in Amsterdam, it is a part of the RELX Group, known until 2015 as Reed Elsevier.
Market position
Share of global article output 2016, open access gold share
Portfolio overview
Imprints, open access gold and hybrid shares by the number of articles
APC price points
Mean values of institutional expenses for Elsevier APCs in 2017 compared to overall mean values in 2017
Publisher approach to the transition to open access
In contrast to other major publishers who have shown a willingness to collaborate with the academic community on models that enable a large-scale transition of subscriptions to open access, Elsevier maintains separate business models for subscriptions and open access publishing. This approach, on the one hand, reinforces the paywall system and, on the other, ensures Elsevier a substantial second revenue stream in the form of hybrid APCs.
Elsevier’s unwillingness to meet the open access goals of Sweden’s Bibsam Consortium and Germany’s Projekt DEAL consortium lead to cancellation of Elsevier contracts. By the end of 2018, cancellation is taken into account by the University of California due to the same reasons.
According to a Charleston advisor report done by Heather Morrison in 2016/17, an Elsevier full flip to OA via APCs seems unlikely as the publisher could not accomplish its current revenues through an APC business model.
Characteristics of the transformative agreements negotiated
Elsevier currently offers no explicit transformative mechanism in its subscription agreements. Nevertheless, libraries and consortia looking to rein in the unchecked revenue stream of hybrid publishing (double-dipping) and take a pro-active approach to the transition to open access have succeeded in gaining some ground, or have walked away from the negotiating table with the resounding support of their indignant research communities.
- The Finnish FinELib consortia secured Finnish corresponding authors a discount on APCs
- VSNU in The Netherlands reached an agreement which covered open access publication of a certain share of articles for Dutch corresponding authors (see full agreement).
Share your agreement facts and asessments with ESAC!
We’d like to capture your lessons learned from transformative agreements in order to create an overview of the agreements in place that will help others in their negotiations. Contribute your agreement information and assessments here.
Share comments on Elsevier
Do you want to share something with regards to Springer Nature that might be helpful to others? Drop a brief comment below! (comments will be moderated)