UC's Walkaway from Elsevier: Statements of Solidarity and Informative Posts
Since the ten institutions in the University of California system walked away from their Elsevier subscriptions in February, several other institutions have expressed their support and solidarity, as well as sharing information with their local communities about what the UCs’ decision might mean to other researchers and institutions across the country. I wrote one such post for our Library News blog. You can find several more statements and explainers in this Twitter thread, started by Chris Bourg at MIT. There you’ll find statements from Oregon, Oregon State, Duke & Iowa State, Williams College, University of Minnesota, and the Canadian Association of Research Libraries.
Today I encountered two additional statements. The first is from Elaine Westbrooks, the Dean of Libraries at the University of North Carolina, and it foreshadows a tough round of negotiations with Elsevier this year at UNC. The second is from Virginia Tech’s head of open publishing, Peter Potter, with a great informative blog post with very useful background on the bigger picture, including “read and publish” agreements and the European countries’ aggressive goals for making all of their research open within the next few years.