Journal publisher Elsevier reaches an open access arrangement with Norway

The biggest journal publisher has been holding on to its increasingly unpopular pay-to-read model, which charges institutions subscriptions and a fee per article for other readers. This is increasingly unpopular with universities and governments in Europe and the University of California did not renew its contract for Elsevier journals when talks broke-down over, in part, open access at the start of the year. Now however it appears that Norwegian universities and Elsevier have reached agreement, which will provide the publisher’s scholarly journals to university libraries and make individual articles free to read.

What’s in it for Elsevier was not reported last night, but it will likely be a pay to publish arrangement, where Norwegian universities pay a fee when articles by their academics appear in one of the company’s journals.