The Swedish Elsevier Cancellation Affect

Researchers from Swedish universities are looking at the impact of cancelling Elsevier contracts.

Consequences of Sweden Cancelling Elsevier : a presentation at the LIBER 2019 conference (June 27, 2019) by Lisa Olsson, Camila Hertil, Frida Jakobsson, and Lovisa Österlund.

The Surveys used to collect the data were posted by the same authors to figshare on Jan 31, 2019. Links are included to the press release, and FAQ on the cancellation and the assignment.

OA textbooks published at the UCs

UC Berkeley Library just announced the recent publication of an #OER #opentextbook resulting from their @UCBerkekyLib faculty grant program. The library used @pressbooks as a platform for “Interpreting Love Narratives in East Asian Literature & Film.”

CC-BY-SA John Wallace https://berkeley.pressbooks.pub/interpretinglovenarratives/

Bending the Curve: Climate Change Solutions for the multi UC campus course, Bending the Curve is edited by UC San Diego’s Veerabhadran Ramanathan has previews (OA June 2020) on the UC Office of the President’s section of eScholarship. One of our faculty contacted us to get access so that he can use the preprints for his Fall 2019 semester class!

CC-BY-NC-SA The UC Regents https://escholarship.org/uc/bending_the_curve_digital_textbook

Open Access Tipping Point Public Forum Livestreaming!

From the University of California’s Office of Scholarly Communication announcement:

The University of California (UC) will be hosting an Open Access Tipping Point Public Forum in Washington, DC on August 29th from 2:00-4:30 pm EDT. This free, interactive public event is intended to advance understanding of the value and opportunities associated with negotiating, participating in, and supporting transformative open access agreements for all stakeholders in the scholarly publishing community – publishers, societies, funders, libraries, and academic authors. We hope you’ll join us!

See the blog post for the livestreaming link and forum agenda.

More publishing merger news – the pushback grows

https://www.infodocket.com/2019/08/13/group-of-textbook-authors-file-breach-of-contract-lawsuit-against-cengage/?utm_source=id&utm_medium=IDTW&utm_campaign=articles

The groups opposing the merger of Cengage and McGraw-Hill are growing. Textbook authors and SPARC, a “global coalition committed to making Open the default for research and education,” have joined a coalition of students to bring legislation and focus advocacy efforts on stopping the merger of the textbook publishing giants.

The UCs & Elsevier

Today (August 2, 2019), the UC negotiating team issued a fact-check of Elsevier’s claims in their multi-pronged messaging campaign.

Understand the reasons behind the UC’s efforts to ensure access to research generated at our campuses and practice fiscal responsibility for the research funding provided by taxpayer dollars. Open Statement: Why UC terminated journal negotiations with Elsevier (March 2019)

Have questions? Talk to your librarian!