Bibsam Consortium

Bibsam Consortium is a consortium where 85 higher education and research institutions in Sweden participate to negotiate license agreements for electronic information resources.[1][2] The consortium is head by the National Library of Sweden which negotiate and administrate license agreements for e-resource packages. The participating institutions sign a power of attorney which allows the National Librarian to sign contracts with the e-resource providers.

History and Scope

Bibsam Consortium was formed in 1996 in order to negotiate license agreements for electronic resources on behalf of Swedish Universities, research institutes and government agencies in Sweden. The total turnover of the agreements in 2015 was € 33 million and was € 35 million in 2017 [3]. Out of this, 73% of the turnover is from the ten large universities of Sweden. There are six members in National Library of Sweden to negotiate and administrate the 100 license agreements for approximately 40 e-resource packages [2].

Negotiation with Elsevier

In 2018, Bibsam Consortium terminated its agreement with Elsevier publishers in order to stop rising prices of publishing and to support open access publishing [4]. The termination took into effect by 1 July 2018, and Swedish Universities and colleges do not have access to 2100 e-journals published by Elsevier. However, all articles published between 1 January 1995 and 30 June 2018 will still be available [5]. Astrid Söderbergh Widding, President of Stockholm University, Chairman of the Bibsam consortium steering committee and Head of the negotiation team, said:

Increasing costs of scientific information are straining university budgets on a global scale while publishers operate on high profit margins. An alternative to the current publishing and pricing model is 'open access', where institutions pay to publish their articles and the articles become open for everyone to read, immediately upon publication. We need to monitor the total cost of publication as we see a tendency towards a rapid increase of costs for both reading and publishing. The current system for scholarly communication must change and our only option is to cancel deals when they don’t meet our demands for a sustainable transition to open access.[6]

The requirements that Bibsam Consortium asks for are[7]:

  • Immediate open access to all articles published by researchers affiliated to participating organizations in Elsevier journals.
  • Reading access for participating organisations to all articles in Elsevier’s journals.
  • A sustainable price model that enables a transition to open access.
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References
  1. "Sweden cancels Elsevier contract as open-access dispute spreads". Times Higher Education (THE). 16 May 2018. Retrieved 21 May 2018.
  2. "Bibsam Consortium" (PDF). Retrieved 21 May 2018.
  3. "Sweden stands up for open access – cancels agreement with Elsevier". Mynewsdesk. Retrieved 21 May 2018.
  4. "Sweden to open source digital science journals and boycotts Elsevier". Good e-Reader. 18 May 2018. Retrieved 21 May 2018.
  5. "Sweden makes a stand for open access – terminates Elsevier agreement Karolinska Institutet Universitetsbiblioteket". kib.ki.se. Retrieved 21 May 2018.
  6. "Sweden stands up for open access – cancels agreement with Elsevier". OpenAccess.se (in Swedish). 16 May 2018. Retrieved 21 May 2018.
  7. "The agreement with Elsevier is cancelled – Sweden stands up for Open Access - Mälardalen University Sweden". www.mdh.se. Retrieved 12 June 2018.
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