Switzerland: swissuniversities and Elsevier Announce a Transformative Pilot Agreement Combining Reading and Publishing

swissuniversities has adopted a new transformative pilot agreement with Elsevier for research access and Open Access publishing in Switzerland.

The agreement is the result of the negotiations organised by the Consortium of Swiss Academic Libraries (CSAL) and Elsevier, a global information analytics business specialising in science and health. Yves Flückiger, President of swissuniversities and head of the negotiation team, said: “We are committed to achieving full Open Access by 2024 and this agreement is a big step towards that objective.”

As a result, all member institutions of swissuniversities and additional CSAL consortium member institutions as well as their affiliated researchers across Switzerland will have continued access to the Freedom Collection and ScienceDirect, Elsevier’s leading platform of peer-reviewed scholarly literature. Researchers affiliated to CSAL consortium member institutions can access 16 million publications from over 2,500 journals published by Elsevier and its society partners via ScienceDirect. Furthermore, researchers will be able to publish Open Access across the majority of Elsevier’s Gold and Hybrid journals, scaling up to 100% by 2023.

This is a key milestone with regard to the national Open Access strategy of swissuniversities, which aims to achieve 100% Open Access by 2024. The four-year agreement is the first time CSAL has signed a national contract with a major publisher and will support all academic and research institutions across Switzerland as they transition to Open Access.