TO: The UC Berkeley academic community

FROM: Jeff MacKie-Mason, University Librarian and Professor

February 1, 2019

Dear Colleagues,

As described in our open letter sent December 19, 2018, the University of California has been in negotiations to renew its systemwide license with scholarly journal publisher Elsevier.

Throughout these negotiations, UC has remained committed to two key goals: facilitating open access publishing of UC research, and holding down costs by integrating open access article processing charges (APCs) and subscription fees into a single contract.

UC and Elsevier have agreed to continue good-faith discussions for the time being. For now, access to Elsevier articles is expected to continue. Should we learn of any changes to access at UC, we will notify our community.

If Elsevier were to reduce access to subscribed content at any point, access to articles published from 2019 forward, as well as a limited amount of historical content, would no longer be available directly on Elsevier’s ScienceDirect platform. UC will still have direct access to most Elsevier articles published in 2018 or earlier.

In that event, the Library will work with researchers to get them the articles they need through other means, such as interlibrary loan. Visit Alternative access to Elsevier articles on the Library’s website for more details.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to email the Library at scholarly-resources@lists.berkeley.edu at any time.

Jeff MacKie-Mason, University Librarian and Professor