Over the past five years, the University of California has established agreements with more than a dozen journal publishers that provide funding support for open access publishing in addition to reading access. Each of these agreements advances two fundamental priorities for the university: fiscal responsibility and the goal of making UC research freely available to the public. UC is currently in negotiations with Taylor & Francis to achieve a similar agreement.
Many of UC’s initial open access agreements were with STEM-focused publishers, and the UC libraries are working to extend these benefits to the humanities and social sciences, as well — disciplines in which Taylor & Francis is a significant publisher.
However, Taylor & Francis has proposed adding open access publishing costs on top of subscription fees for the same journals — a “double-dipping” tactic the UC Academic Senate has explicitly taken a stand against. Unfortunately, Taylor & Francis has so far been unwilling to consider an agreement that redirects the university’s spend from reading to open access publishing, as many other publishers have done.
While our previous contract ended on December 31, 2023, contract negotiations routinely continue into the next calendar year without any immediate interruption to journal content access, and so far, that is the case here. We are hopeful that the negotiations with Taylor & Francis will reach a successful resolution soon. That said, if we are unable to reach an agreement by March 31, we may lose direct access to 2024 articles through the Taylor & Francis Online platform.
The UC Libraries are preparing to provide UC scholars with access to needed articles with minimal disruption or delay, regardless of what happens with the negotiations — just as we have done successfully in the past when we were out of contract with a journal publisher for a period of time.
We will provide an update as soon as there is news to share on the progress of the negotiations. In the meantime, please feel free to email us with any questions you may have.
Thank you!
Letter sent to All Faculty from Christopher Ojeda, Chair of LASC and Haipeng Li, University Librarian
Thursday, February 22, 2024
