UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, ACADEMIC SENATEBERKELEY • DAVIS • IRVINE • LOS ANGELES • MERCED • RIVERSIDE • SAN DIEGO • SAN FRANCISCO

Robert C. May
Telephone: (510) 987-0711
Email: robert.may@ucop.edu

SANTA BARBARA • SANTA CRUZ

Chair of the Assembly of the Academic Senate
Faculty Representative to the Regents
University of California
1111 Franklin Street, 12th Floor
Oakland, California 94607-5200

February 28, 2019

University of California Academic Council Statement on the University’s
Negotiations with Elsevier Publishing
The Academic Council of the Academic Senate of the University of California (UC), hereby signals
its collective and resolute commitment to support UC’s negotiating position with Elsevier in order toadvance UC’s mission as a public institution, make the products of our research and scholarship as
freely and widely available as possible, and ensure that UC spends taxpayer money in the mostethically, morally, and socially-responsible way when entering into agreements with commercialpublishers.
Background
The University of California has been negotiating with Elsevier, the largest commercial publisher ofscholarly journals. As part of the current negotiations, UC has been seeking sustainable cost controls
as well as a novel transformative agreement in which our Elsevier authors would retain theircopyrights, their articles would become completely and immediately open access, and the paymentsfor open access publishing would offset our Elsevier subscription expenditures. By design, such atransformative agreement would be transitional and accelerate a shift to full open access for all ourElsevier authors within a very few years. Most significantly, a successful agreement would alignclosely with the mission of the University to provide “long-term societal benefits through transmitting
advanced knowledge, discovering new knowledge, and functioning as an active working repositoryof organized knowledge.”
At the present time, UC and Elsevier have reached an impasse in their negotiations and our contract
has lapsed. Nonetheless, the Academic Council of the Academic Senate stands firm in its convictionthat a comprehensive transformative agreement that covers all Elsevier titles is required to achieve
the aspirations embodied in the Academic Senate’s Open Access Policy, and articulated by theUniversity Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication (UCOLASC) in its Declaration ofRights and Principles, and by the Systemwide Library and Scholarly Information Committee(SLASIAC) in its Call to Action. We support the unified strategies of the UC libraries to ameliorate
the negative effects of the impasse on faculty, researchers, and students, and applaud their efforts toclosely monitor alternative access along with the impacts it may have on research and teaching.
We ask all publishers to work with UC in good faith to meet our short- and long-term goals fortransforming scholarly communication, and we encourage our faculty to weigh these goals whendeciding where to send their work for publication, when agreeing to review manuscripts, or when
performing editorial duties. Moreover, we urge all UC authors to utilize our open access policies tomake their final pre-publication manuscripts publicly and immediately accessible in our institutionalrepository.

Members of the 2018-19 Academic Council

Robert C. May, Chair
Academic Council

Barbara Spackman, Chair
UC Berkeley Academic Senate

Kum-Kum Bhavnani, Vice Chair
Academic Council

David Teitel, Chair
UC San Francisco Academic
SenateLok Siu, Chair
University Committee on
Affirmative Action,Diversity, and Equity

Henning Bohn, Chair
UC Santa Barbara Academic
SenateDaniel Farber, Chair
University Committee on
Academic Personnel

Kristin Lagattuta, Chair
UC Davis Academic Senate

Linda Cohen, Chair
UC Irvine Academic Senate

Joseph Bristow, Chair
UC Los Angeles Academic
SenateKurt Schnier, Chair
UC Merced Academic Senate

Dylan Rodriguez, Chair
UC Riverside Academic Senate

Kimberly Lau, Chair
UC Santa Cruz Academic
SenateEddie Comeaux, Chair
Board of Admissions andRelations with Schools

Onyebuchi A. Arah, Chair
Coordinating Committee onGraduate Affairs

Robert Horwitz, Chair
UC San Diego AcademicSenate

Anne Zanzucchi, Chair
University Committee on
Educational Policy

Sean Malloy, Chair
University Committee on
Faculty Welfare

Andrew Baird, Chair
University Committee on
Research Policy

James Steintrager, Chair
University Committee on
Planning and Budget

Chairs of Other Systemwide Academic Senate Committees

Richard Schneider, Chair
University Committee on
Library and Scholarly
Communication

Maryann Martone, Chair
University Committee on
Academic Computing andCommunications

2Kevin Plaxco, Chair
University Committee on
Committees

Darlene Francis, Chair
University Committee on
Preparatory Education

Adebisi Agboola, Chair
University Committee on
Privilege and Tenure

Eric Rauchway, Chair
University Committee on
Academic Freedom

Michael Lazzara, Chair
University Committee on
International Education

Jonathan Glater, Chair
University Committee on
Rules and Jurisdiction

Margaret Chowning, Chair
Editorial Committee

3Michael Todd, Chair
Special Committee on LabIssues