I hope you’ve had a chance to learn about the new agreements opening up research articles by University of Alberta authors in most SAGE journals, PLOS Biology, and PLOS Medicine. If not, please read about them here.
There’s also been more good news emerging from the work of the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN).
1. New license with Elsevier
As a result of eleven (!) months of negotiating with Elsevier, CRKN has announced a new license for ScienceDirect. This new license includes a price reduction of 12.5% for 2021, followed by a 0% change for 2022, and a 2% increase for 2023. It also includes a 20% discount on Article Processing Charges (APCs) for both hybrid and gold open access journals. (Cell Press, Lancet, and some other society-owned journals are excluded.) Last, this new license contains no confidentiality or non-disclosure clause. This ensures transparency and strengthens the position of other schools and consortia who are similarly negotiating new Elsevier agreements.
2. Permanent elimination of hosting fees for Eighteenth Century Collections Online and Times Digital Archive
We purchase many Gale primary-source collections through CRKN. As you may know, sometimes such collections carry annual hosting fees. CRKN was able to negotiate with Gale to eliminate such hosting fees for ECCO and TDA in perpetuity if CRKN members, together, met a spending threshold with this year’s Gale purchases. This results in savings of thousands of dollars per year.