Elsevier’s commitment to Universal Access

Abstract

At Elsevier we recognise that access to quality research is vital to the scientific community and beyond. For us this means providing support and the latest tools to maintain the quality and integrity of published scientific literature, achieving the widest dissemination of content, and embracing the opportunities of open access.

Elsevier is committed to universal access, quality, and sustainability. We encourage active engagement and discussions about access.  We are investing our resources in developing new initiatives, expanding our open access and other access initiatives, and in developing our policies.

Global Access initiatives are enabled with organisations throughout the world. Elsevier has established agreements and developed policies to allow authors who publish in Elsevier journals to comply with manuscript archiving requirements of several funding bodies, as specified as conditions of researcher grant awards. Our intention is to further explore collaborations with funding bodies to ensure maximum compliance for their authors, hence also the possibility offered by 1214 of STM subscription-based journals for authors, funding bodies, or other parties to sponsor open access to articles. With 74 journals offering Open Archive and 23 Open Access journal titles available on ScienceDirect and a number already in the pipeline, Elsevier offers several ways for authors to make their work available beyond the subscription model in several scientific areas spanning from Immunology, to Pharma, Physics, Genomics and including well-known brands such as Cell Reports.

Elsevier Open Access Solutions are thought in line with our commitment to delivering the highest level of sustainable access to quality content. An example of which is our support towards major academic achievements as exemplified by our commitment to annually making the work of Nobel Prize winners freely available on ScienceDirect. Similarly, Elsevier is making all articles in the high-energy physics area reporting results from CERN’s LHC Project freely available on ScienceDirect.

We believe subscription and open-access publishing can co-exist and we will continue to invest to close remaining access gaps globally – thus, also via philanthropic programmes that address the needs of less developed countries -  and support a balanced mix of universal access mechanisms as the key drivers for a high-quality and sustainable scholarly communication system.