NEWS FEATURE Are latest rejections a big deal?


Nine universities are known to have rejected the freshly negotiated deal with publisher Elsevier, and more will be watching. What could it mean for the sector?


ACADEMIC librarians across the UK will be follow- ing how many universities are accepting or rejecting deals with the biggest academic publishers. For many years they have said that their institutions have


been accepting deals with publishers that are not value for money. It was hoped that 2025 would be a year of coordinated action against publishing deals that fell short of expectations, and that this task would be made easier by the HE sector’s financial­


­crisis.


Some might argue that there has been no success with coor- dinated attempts to use sector bargaining power to improve the deals (https://tinyurl.com/3cvxmvxj).­ But­ the­ financial­ crisis­ appears to have swept aside the strategy of using rejections as a bargaining tool to force a better deal. Instead of a rejec- tion being a negotiating tactic for a better deal, they could now­­herald­more­significant­and­long-term­breaks­from­big­ deals with publishers.


Numbers Nine universities are already known to have rejected the recently negotiated ‘read and publish’ deal between the HE sector and Elsevier, the biggest academic publisher in the world. It is believed that some institutions have yet to decide and some are predicting a potential third wave of rejections over the next few months. David Prosser, executive director of Research Libraries UK (RLUK), doesn’t expect many more to emerge now, saying: “Not being part of the contract process I don’t have access to­exact­numbers,­but­it’s­probably­double­figures­roughly.” Agreements are made via Jisc’s platform and a spokesperson for Jisc said orders were still coming in, with some institutions still belatedly accepting deals. Any institutions that have not made a decision yet are being encouraged to speak with Jisc about exploring alternative read and publish options. Sheffield,­York,­Surrey­ rejected­the­previous­deal­ last­year­ and have stayed out again this year. They have been joined by Swansea,­Sheffield­Hallam,­Kent,­Essex,­Sussex­and­Lancaster.­ Elsevier is not the only publisher whose Jisc-negotiated


deal has been rejected. It has been reported that Swansea and Kingston have both rejected Springer Nature and it is believed that other institutions have rejected Sage, Taylor & Francis and Wiley.


Local problem


Broadly speaking teaching intensive universities are smaller than research intensive universities. The nine universities known to have rejected the Elsevier deal have been charac- terised­as­the­“squeezed­middle”,­they­exist­where­teaching­ and research meet. They have signed up to the big deals for decades and although these are ‘read and publish’ deals


12 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL February-March 2026


they­appear­to­be­particularly­unaffordable­to­institutions­ of certain size that do both. But this could have some advantages. Universities benchmark themselves against similar peers in what has become an increasingly competitive and less cooperative environment. This competition between institutions is why universities are reluctant to reject deals if their peers haven’t. The concentration of similar universities rejecting deals could make that decision-making process easier in the future.


Positive move


Fears about the impact of leaving the big deals appear to have been unfounded and the hope is that there could be positives. But no university appears to have rejected a deal for any rea- son­other­than­being­unable­to­afford­it. The Inter Library Loans system has worked. It is a slower process but the question is whether not having that sort of instant access is a real disadvantage, or a perceived disadvan- tage. There have been no predictions of long-term negative effects­on­the­ability­to­do­research.­ David said: “The primary driver for most institutions has


been­the­financial­situation.­­But­I­think­people­are­looking­at­ whether­they­can­turn­this­from­just­being­a­purely­financial­ decision­into­something­that­has­some­benefits.”


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