UW-Milwaukee Takes Steps for Open Access

On the heels of Open Access Day at UW-Milwaukee, held as part of the first international Open Access Week, it was announced that the UWM Libraries has successfully negotiated a contract with the Elsevier publishing company that will provide increased access to scholarly journals and reduce costs to UWM.

From the announcement sent by Rita Cheng, Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs:

Library patrons will have access to ScienceDirect, a database providing access to 2,000 full text peer-reviewed journals, with content going back to 1995, published by Elsevier and its partners.   Although most titles fall into the categories of science, medicine and technology, there are titles in the areas of business, economics, education, global studies, history, and psychology as well. This agreement, negotiated over the past nine months and in concert with UW-Madison, provides extended access and converts the titles to which we previously subscribed in print (approximately 200 titles) to electronic access.  In addition, the agreement (covering a 5-year period), includes annual increases well below the average annual serial subscription increases. Student support for this was graciously provided by the Advisory Committee on Educational Technology to assist with the cost of conversion from print to electronic format.

I congratulate Libraries Director Ewa Barczyk for her tenacity in securing the best possible terms for UWM.

In a fiscal climate that has led to the unfortunate necessity of canceling 15 percent of our serials over the past year, the new Elsevier contract demonstrates that we are committed to finding ways to counter the negative effects of rising serial costs.

Also in response to our Open Access Day event, the Provost has announced that she will be creating an Open Access Task Force that will be charged with identifying opportunities for action and producing a set of recommendations on Open Access at UWM. I hope to have more to report on that front as the task force materializes.