The Libraries and the Office of the Vice President for Research have engaged in negotiations with Elsevier for the last several months as we’ve sought to renew our ScienceDirect contract. The UVM Faculty Senate passed a resolution in November supporting these efforts. Unfortunately, these negotiations have now failed, as Elsevier has come nowhere close to offering a price we can afford. Elsevier content purchased before 2021 remains available.

The UVM Libraries remain committed to obtaining for you any Elsevier articles you need. Interlibrary Loan will fill without charge every request you send us. We average turnaround times of 11.6 hours per article.

We have set aside funds to cover any increased expenses on our end, including funds to hire additional staff if necessary. The average turnaround time for obtaining articles is 11.6 hours. The median time is much less. We are also exploring provisions for more rapid delivery in cases of urgent need.

A growing number of authors post copies of their articles in repositories, and searches in Google Scholar find most of them. We are hearing interest from faculty colleagues at UVM about sponsoring a resolution in which UVM faculty would agree to post their own articles to open repositories.

If there is any solace in this news, it is that we find ourselves in good company, part of an ever-growing list of institutions that have failed to reach agreement on “big deal” journal packages. This announcement does not mark an end to negotiations with Elsevier. Elsevier returned to the negotiating table with the University of California System after UC proved able to live without ScienceDirect for two years. We will try again.

A good deal more information is available here. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to Dean of Libraries Bryn Geffert with questions.