If SUNY negotiations with Elsevier fail, Milne Library (pictured above) will have to develop alternative methods to access journals. This may include a larger reliance on open access journals and Milne’s Information Delivery Services (Josie Kwani/former associate photo editor).
Elsevier, an academic journal database company that offers a pack of science journals named “ScienceDirect,” has a current contract with SUNY that will expire at the end of the year. SUNY is now in the process of negotiating a new five-year contract with the academic database, whose services currently cost about nine million dollars each year.
Some SUNY campuses, including Geneseo, purchase additional services from Elsevier named “Cell Press” and “Scopus.” These services provide supplemental journals that are not included in the “ScienceDirect” package. These additional services tack on an additional cost of several hundred thousand dollars per year.
Elsevier accounts for 25 percent of SUNY academic journal expenditures, according to a statement by the SUNY Purchase college library.
“We’ve been negotiating for about a year now,” Geneseo Head of Collection Management at Milne Library Alana Nuth said. “SUNY has a negotiation team and of course Elsevier does as well, and we’re basically just trying to come to a price point that’s agreeable to us as a system and Elsevier as well … as the buyer, you want the lowest price possible. And as a seller you want the highest price possible. So, we’re just trying to come to an agreement on that price.”
Elsevier’s “ScienceDirect” package provides access to hundreds of academic journals, many of which are of the premier variety, according to Geneseo SUNY faculty senator James McLean.
The SUNY Librarian Consortium is leading the negotiations for the new contract. They are negotiating not only pricing but support for Open Access. This supports attempts to reduce the fees authors pay to be published in these journals.
“Negotiations with Elsevier are extremely challenging. They have proven to be inflexible with their pricing model and we have had difficulty getting critical information from them,” according to a summary guide on the issue developed by the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry and SUNY Libraries Consortium working group.
This same summary guide said that, more than a year ago, the Elsevier sales team presented to deans and library directors their “product roadmap.” The SCL inquired about obtaining their presentation slides and received no response.
Many similar requests have been made to Elsevier for SUNY to obtain more information to properly guide negotiations. Elsevier has consistently refused to cooperate, according to the summary guide.
The University of California has decided to stop using the Elsevier services at the conclusion of a similarly difficult negotiation process. Several universities in Europe have also had this issue.
Elsevier has yet to offer SUNY “a fair and reasonable renewal price,” according to a statement made by the SUNY Purchase college library on Oct. 31. This has resulted in another round of negotiations, with SUNY standing firm.
“SUNY is prepared to follow the lead of the University of California and other European universities and decline renewal should Elsevier not lower their costs significantly,” according to the October statement.
SUNY faculty senate has released a resolution that supports SUNY to cut ties with Elsevier if the company will not compromise.
“In the negotiations, Elsevier was like ‘hey you better support your faculty and get them these articles,’” McLean said. “So, the resolution is us as faculty saying no, we support you in your efforts to get a reasonable deal, we’re not going to be mad at you if this deal falls through because we understand that there is such a thing as charging too much.”
At this point, SUNY librarians are preparing for case negotiations to fail with no Elsevier contract renewal. Given that other state systems have experienced unfair negotiation outcomes, SUNY seems confident they can find a solution without Elsevier if needed.
In a letter to SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher, The SUNY Library Directors said “this crisis, and this contract, are only symptoms of a larger problem in scholarly communications and how higher education interacts with the information economy. We, as SUNY, need to develop a multi-faceted long-term strategy for scholarly communications and library funding across our campuses.”
SUNY Library Directors went on to suggest SUNY should “disengage from profit-driven publishing.” This would abandon SUNY support for journals like Elsevier, who charge high prices to benefit their businesses with no regard for education. More than 14,000 “scholars” have signed onto a petition to boycott Elsevier at The Cost of Knowledge.
The SUNY Library Directors also suggest that campuses encourage more use of open access journals, those that are free of charge, as well as develop open access policies.
Nuth said that in the instance SUNY abandons Elsevier, the campus community would depend more heavily on the already-used Information Delivery Services system in Milne Library.
“Negotiations with Elsevier are extremely challenging. They have proven to be inflexible with their pricing model.“
“Most likely it would probably be like inter-library loan or, as we call it here, IDS. If … anyone from Geneseo in the college community needed an article, they would submit a request and then we would get that article either from another college or university library or we would just purchase it directly from the publisher,” Nuth said.
Students were unaware this was occurring, but had differing opinions on where they think the negotiations should go.
Geography and international relations major senior Ellie Dickerman said “I think that SUNY should hold strong because Elsevier is losing clients elsewhere so they should be paying attention to the demands of SUNY and other schools”.
Dickerman goes on to say she believes that using the existing IDS programs is a feasible backup plan.
Political science major sophomore Matthew Pyskaty felt that students should have been made more aware of the negotiations saying “it seems like if they’re spending this much of our tuition and fees on [Elsevier] that really seems like something that needs to be more transparent.”
Pyskaty believes SUNY will ultimately have to cave because Elsevier has such a large share of the academic journal market, but exploring other options is a good idea.