The Council of Australasian University Librarians (CAUL) has reached an in-principle agreement with global academic publisher Elsevier. The in-principle agreement represents the final renegotiated agreement with the four largest international academic journal publication companies and marks a shift toward fairer, more sustainable, and more transparent access to research across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.
Negotiations between CAUL and Elsevier restarted in December after being paused in November with the agreement of all Australian and New Zealand universities. CAUL has secured an improved agreement scheduled to begin in 2026.
The agreement includes a substantial reduction in sector expenditure and provides uncapped hybrid open access publishing across the full Elsevier portfolio, including journals such as those in the Cell Press collection and The Lancet. It also includes measures intended to begin addressing inequities associated with previous legacy pricing models. Gold open access titles are excluded from the agreement.
Under the agreement, more than 10,000 ANZ research articles from Australia and New Zealand are expected to be published openly with Elsevier in 2026, enabling public access to research produced in the region.
Prior to the agreement, Australian and New Zealand universities had been preparing for potential disruption and a multi-year wait for a new arrangement, with contingency plans developed to manage the possible temporary loss of access to Elsevier’s 1,659 academic journals.
The Elsevier agreement follows recent announcements by CAUL, Universities Australia, and Universities New Zealand regarding new agreements with Springer Nature, Wiley, and Taylor & Francis. These agreements were negotiated under CAUL’s trans-Tasman framework, which was established in response to rising institutional costs and long-standing inequities linked to subscription-based pricing and open access processing charges. The Elsevier agreement completes the set of four targeted negotiations under this framework.
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