Elsevier 'big deal' negotiation

The Library is committed to the transformation of academic publishing to create an equitable and open research environment.

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Last updated 11th April 2022

Key points

Our subscription to ScienceDirect (Elsevier) expired at the end of 2021
Sheffield was part of a UK-wide consortium which successfully negotiated a new deal covering the period 1 Jan 2022 to 31 December 2024
The new deal supports our principles of cost reduction and increasing the number of published outputs that are open access
All Sheffield corresponding authors will have the option of publishing their articles open access in Elsevier hybrid titles free of charge

The Library works in partnership with Jisc and other UK academic libraries to negotiate access to content to support the University’s vision for learning and teaching and the University’s commitment to create an open research culture that values a range of contributions and delivers the highest standards and best practice in research integrity and ethics. Our comprehensive content strategy outlines how we approach this.

Our principles:

The Library holds to the negotiating principles of Jisc:

Cost constraint, and ultimately cost reduction
Transitional, breaking from legacy publishing models and ensuring a greater proportion of research is made Open Access
Compliant with funder mandates and policy on Open Research
Transparent, to articulate what public money pays for and why
Effective, improving the workflows of publishers, researchers and libraries.

The terms of the new Elsevier deal:

The broad terms of the deal include a 15% cost reduction across the consortium, unlimited open access publishing in the majority of Elsevier hybrid titles, a 15% reduction in APCs for fully open access titles, and the inclusion of Cell and Lancet titles in the settlement. For UKRI and Wellcome Trust purposes this is considered a transitional agreement and is therefore compliant with both funders' open access policies. Read more about the deal on the Jisc website.