By Lotte Risbæk Thomsen and Liselotte Brandstrup

If you are a frequent user of Science Direct or Scopus, you will be pleased to know that a new national four-year license agreement with Elsevier for the years 2025-2028 has now been finalized after lengthy negotiations.

For CBS, this means continued access to the Elsevier databases ScienceDirect and Scopus.

If you, as a researcher, have ever published Open Access, you may have had to pay for it. The new agreement with Elsevier includes an Open Access clause, that entails that you can publish your articles as Open Access in Elsevier subscription journals (the so-called 'hybrid' journals) at no cost.

If you want to publish your article as Open Access free of charge, you still need to fulfil the following requirements:

  • You, a CBS researcher, are the corresponding author (or the corresponding author is affiliated with one of the other consortium members)
  • The manuscript is accepted for publication during the period covered by the agreement
  • The journal you wish to publish in is part of the agreement

Another important feature of the Elsevier agreement is that it comes without the so-called 'cap', which is incorporated in many of the other Open Access agreements with publishers. This means that the Elsevier agreement entails no limitations on the number of articles that can be published as Open Access at no cost in a year.

With the new agreement, Elsevier is launching a pilot project focusing on CO2 emissions. Elsevier commits to providing data on energy consumption and CO2 emissions related to the use of databases, which is interesting in relation to CBS's increased focus on green transition and national climate goals.

Elsevier writes: “Denmark's climate targets are a reduction of 70% in GHG emissions by 2030 and attainment of net neutrality by 2040… Elsevier agrees to enter into a pilot to explore how to allocate and report specifically on digital emissions derived from the Consortium's activities, including energy consumption leading to GHG discharges in accordance with GHG-P scope 3.11, pertaining specifically to data center usage and web-based software applications."

 

If you have questions about the Elsevier agreement reach out to Lotte Risbæk Thomsen, if it is about Open Acces publishing write to oa@cbs.dk