The Strauss Library has signed a new contract with the academic publisher Elsevier that achieves a 15 percent cost reduction from the current contract along with changes in how users will access some journal articles.

Agreement on the new contract (2024-27) was reached after more than six months of negotiations by a coalition of 15 research universities in Colorado and Wyoming. For the first time, members of the group known as the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries will have different levels of access and publishing services within the master agreement.

For CU Anschutz, the new contract means a more flexible arrangement with Elsevier for what is called a Shared Title List (STL). This allows campus affiliates continued full-text access to the most frequently used titles contained in the Elsevier “Freedom Collection.” For titles not included in this new STL agreement, CU Anschutz students and employees will be able to request the articles they need from Interlibrary Loan (ILL) at no cost.

Traditionally, the Strauss Library purchased access to academic journals using a model similar to purchasing cable television at home where users pay a fee for access to a package that includes some premium channels and a lot of other channels. Strauss Library was paying a high price to Elsevier for access to a large package, often called a “big deal,” containing journals the campus wanted and many more it did not need.

The STL is carefully curated by an expert team of librarians and includes access to more than 600 journals with consistently high use by CU Anschutz members. Strauss Library will continue to consider purchasing titles based on patron suggestions and will supply access to individual articles requested through ILL. 

The agreement also extends a 10% discount on article processing charges (APCs) for corresponding authors from CU Anschutz and Alliance member institutions. The instructions to obtain the discount are being finalized and will eventually be listed with other APC discounts the library has negotiated for CU Anschutz members.

Contract negotiations with Elsevier started last summer and concluded this month. The negotiating team from CU Anschutz included representatives from the Strauss Library, Leslie J Berg, PhD (Immunology and Microbiology Department), and faculty at large from other member campuses. Questions about this renewal, as well as any library resource, can be asked of Yumin Jiang (yumin.jiang@cuanschutz.edu), Head of Collection Management for Strauss Library.