Rutgers Enters Into Transformative Open Access Agreement With Leading Global Academic Publisher Elsevier

Rutgers University announced a historic, transformative open-access partnership with Elsevier, a global leader in information, scientific research, and analytics that publishes leading academic journals including The Lancet and Cell.

This agreement marks an important step toward making the results of Rutgers’ research openly accessible, increasing its readership and impact, and ensuring it is globally and permanently available.

The five-year arrangement managed by the Rutgers University Libraries will make over 4,600 journals, 1,400 of which are fully open access, accessible to the Rutgers community.

“This agreement will serve as an amplifier for our scholars and the university by furthering the reach of our research output and its impact on a global scale. It also demonstrates the Libraries’ and the university’s commitment and resolve to ensuring equitable access to information,” said Prabhas V. Moghe, executive vice president for academic affairs. “This achievement is part of a growing list of transformative agreements negotiated by the libraries.”

Researchers with a current Rutgers appointment, including graduate and undergraduate students, will be able to publish open access in any of Elsevier’s 1,700 hybrid journals that include both open access as well as traditional subscribed content, without incurring Article Processing Charges (APCs). The agreement lowers the overall cost of APCs, allotting a portion of articles that can be published APC-free throughout its duration.

On average, Rutgers researchers publish 500 articles per year in Elsevier journals, and the anticipated overall APC savings for its researchers over the course of this agreement is expected to exceed $7 million, representing significant savings for the university. The savings can be leveraged to support research and critical academic initiatives.

Rutgers is among the first members of the Big Ten Academic Alliance along with the University of Illinois and the Ohio State University to have a Read and Publish agreement with Elsevier. This agreement maintains the commitment of the Rutgers University Libraries to provide the critical resources needed to support groundbreaking research and student success.

“Partnerships like this one support and empower our researchers and students to communicate the results of their research, scholarship, and creative endeavors to the nation and world. Simplifying access to an important knowledge repository reduces the burden and cost of performing research and encourages collaboration at Rutgers,” said Michael E. Zwick, senior vice president for research at Rutgers. “Our office will support the Rutgers Libraries and spur the use of this tool to advance research and innovation outcomes bettering the world.”