The 10-campus University of California system (UC), 20 of 23 California State University (CSU) campuses, and 30 private academic and research institutions represented by the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC) have reached a comprehensive four-year transformative open access agreement with Oxford University Press (OUP). The agreement begins this month and will provide affiliated researchers with access to OUP’s world-leading journals and support for publishing their work open access.
“This partnership between UC, CSU and SCELC demonstrates the power of collaboration across diverse institutions,” said Mark Hanna, Associate Professor of History at UC San Diego and chair of the UC faculty Academic Senate’s systemwide committee on library and scholarly communication. “By joining forces, we are advancing open access and amplifying the global impact of California’s scholarship. I’m excited to see this significant step forward, which reflects our shared commitment to creating a more accessible, equitable, and sustainable future for scholarly communication.”
This major agreement harnesses the resources of research institutions, private liberal arts colleges, comprehensive universities, and special libraries across California by redirecting existing library subscription funds to support authors publishing open access. The agreement enables authors at the participating institutions to publish articles using an open access license at reduced or no cost in more than 500 hybrid and fully open access OUP journals. Authors with grant funds available will pay a discounted open access publishing fee across OUP’s hybrid and fully open access journals. Authors who do not have grant funds available will be able to publish open access in hybrid journals at no cost to them.
“As a catalyst for transformative change in scholarly communication, SCELC is dedicated to forging agreements that empower libraries and their researchers,” said Teri Oaks Gallaway, SCELC executive director. “By working with Oxford University Press, we are not only expanding access to high-impact research but also driving a more sustainable and equitable publishing future for our member institutions.”
Transformative agreements provide a way for institutions to maintain access to scholarly content available only through subscription, while supporting the transition to open access publishing by their affiliated researchers. Institutions are, in effect, redirecting their expenditures on subscriptions to cover the open access article publication charges. Through this agreement, thousands of researchers at 60 institutions will be eligible for financial support when they choose to publish open access in OUP journals.
“CSU libraries are delighted to provide our students and faculty with access to more OUP journals than ever before and the opportunity to openly publish their research,” said Ann Roll, Director of Systemwide Digital Library Content at the CSU Office of the Chancellor. “Through transformative and collaborative work with our partners at UC and SCELC, CSU research can be shared openly and CSU students will have the OUP resources they need for their success, all at a sustainable cost to CSU libraries.”
The aim of this transformative agreement is to make it easier and more affordable for authors from SCELC, CSU and UC institutions to publish open access rather than behind a paywall, while also controlling the participating institutions’ journal expenditures. Like other transformative agreements at UC, CSU and SCELC, this agreement aligns with the institutions’ missions and contributes to the global shift towards sustainable open access publishing by making more research and scholarship from California freely available to the world.
The agreement demonstrates how innovative, diverse, multi-institution cooperation can play a vital role in the open access movement by ensuring that researchers at academic institutions of all types can fully engage in the benefits of open access publishing.
“We are delighted to reach this agreement with the California universities,” said Alastair Lewis, Sales Director, OUP. “The negotiations for this agreement have been positive and constructive, and we are really excited to expand access to our world-leading journals and open access publishing across these universities.”
