Carnegie Mellon University and Elsevier have hammered out a "read-and-publish" deal, Inside Higher Ed reports.
Under the deal, which is to go into effect at the beginning of the year and is for four years, Carnegie Mellon is to pay a flat amount for access to Elsevier's journals and for investigators at the school to be able to make their research immediately publicly available in those journals, IHE adds. This, it notes, is similar to the deal Elsevier struck earlier this year with a Norweigan consortium of universities and libraries.
A number of universities have been pushing for "read-and-publish" deals. In particular, the University of California has sparred with Elsevier over open-access journal payments. Stat News reported last year that UC had paid Elsevier more than $10 million a year for access to Elsevier journals and UC researchers paid it another $1 million to make their work freely accessible, fees the university system sought to bundle together. Elsevier resisted, it noted, saying that its current model was popular. In March, UC announced that it had decided not to renew its Elsevier contract.
While some individuals pushing for such contracts tell IHE that this deal between Carnegie Mellon and Elsevier gives them hope that the publisher may be ready to strike similar deals with other US institutions, others note that Carnegie Mellon, as an engineering- and computer science-focused school, publishes a smaller number of articles in Elsevier journals than other institutions.