Texas Universities Reach Historic Deal with Elsevier: TLCUA Saves Texas Universities Millions Collectively

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(November 30, 2022) Texas Library Coalition for United Action (TLCUA) is pleased to announce that it has concluded negotiations with Elsevier, and all TLCUA members have signed or are finalizing new agreements for subscription journal access. In 2019, 44 public and private university campuses across Texas joined together to form TLCUA to think creatively about access to faculty publications and the sustainability of journal subscriptions. TLCUA has negotiated with Elsevier, the world’s largest publisher of scientific journals, including The Lancet and Cell and over 2,500 other journals covering topics in medicine, biology, psychology, engineering, business and more. The TLCUA effort aligns with other libraries across academia that have sought to evolve the relationship between libraries and publishers and find new ways to thrive together.

All TLCUA members will receive a discount on journal subscriptions—some as high as 30%—while still maintaining significant amounts of access to journals and combined, will realize a savings of over $4.75M annually. Beyond initial cost savings, Elsevier agreed to a maximum annual increase of 2% over the course of the license agreement, with some years as low as 0%, which is significantly lower than industry standard.

John Sharp, Chancellor of the Texas A&M University System, said, “Since the beginning of the negotiations, the administration and faculty have stood behind the libraries in this effort. We are proud that so many institutions in Texas came together to realize cost savings and increase access not only in Texas but around the world.”

TLCUA certainly had ambitious goals to negotiate sustainable pricing for strained library budgets in higher education, but also made progress on its other goals of improving access to scholarship and providing authors with greater control over their published work over time.

TLCUA and Elsevier have agreed to partner on a pilot project to revert ownership of journal articles back to original authors—and not just those at TLCUA-member institutions. Currently, authors transfer copyright of their work in exchange for that work being published. This pilot will provide for rights to go back to authors after a period of time that will be collaboratively determined with Elsevier. A subset of Elsevier journals will be chosen to study the impact of the copyright reversion pilot for authors and its applicability more broadly to STEM (scientific, technical, engineering and medical) publishers.

Further, all TLCUA-member authors who choose to publish their work under an open access license will have access to discounted author publication charges (APCs). TLCUA also negotiated a license template that removed non-disclosure terms, restrictions on sharing usage data, and 44-year-old limitations on interlibrary loans (i.e., CONTU Guidelines) to expand library collaboration and improve how libraries can share information on journal usage.

“We worked very hard with Elsevier leadership and negotiators to come to an agreement that aligns the values and priorities of our members and those held by Elsevier,” says lead negotiator and open access advocate Jeffrey Spies of 221B Consulting. “I am particularly excited about the copyright pilot project. Copyright is an often-overlooked ingredient in securing a more open scholarship, and the library community has a real opportunity here: to work with authors to share their work openly because it will once again be their work.”

Along with Spies, the team negotiating with Elsevier consisted of faculty, library leaders and librarians with collections expertise representing the diverse membership of TLCUA. They are David Carlson, former Dean of University Libraries at Texas A&M University; Kelly Gonzalez, Assistant Vice President for Library Services at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center; Deborah Hathaway, Acquisitions and Collection Development Librarian at the University of Dallas; Ian Knabe, Head of Acquisitions and Resource Sharing at the University of Houston; Asheley Landrum, Associate Professor and interim Assistant Dean for Research in the College of Media & Communication at Texas Tech University; Vagheesh Narasimhan, Assistant Professor of Integrative Biology and Statistics and Data Sciences at the University of Texas Austin; Richard Nollan, former Dean of Libraries at Texas Tech Health Sciences Center; Alexia Thompson-Young, Assistant Director of Scholarly Resources at the University of Texas Austin; Charles Weaver, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and Associate Dean for Sciences at Baylor University; and Ginger Williams, Head Acquisitions Administrative Librarian at Texas State University.

Initial workshops to define the parameters of the pilot project will begin soon. TLCUA has begun exploring their next negotiation priorities and other projects that can benefit from state-wide collaboration. Sara Lowman, TLCUA Chair and Vice Provost and University Librarian at Rice University, is enthusiastic about the future of TLCUA. “The Coalition demonstrated what can be done when Texas institutions aligned by their principles work together. We have big plans,” she said.

About TLCUA

TLCUA represents more than 660,000 students and 44,000 faculty. This consortium is one of the largest and most diverse library consortia in the United States. Faculty in the Coalition member libraries account for 7.2% of all research output in the United States and about 6% of all U.S. research published by Elsevier. The economic impact of Coalition members is significant with annual expenditures exceeding $275 million.

Current TLCUA members are:

  • Angelo State University
  • Baylor University
  • Lamar University
  • Prairie View A&M University
  • Rice University
  • Sam Houston State University
  • Stephen F. Austin State University
  • Sul Ross State University
  • Tarleton State University
  • Texas A&M International University
  • Texas A&M University (College Station)
  • Texas A&M University-Central Texas
  • Texas A&M University-Commerce
  • Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi
  • Texas A&M University-Kingsville
  • Texas A&M University-San Antonio
  • Texas A&M University School of Dentistry
  • Texas A&M University-Texarkana
  • Texas Medical Center
  • Texas State University
  • Texas Tech University (Lubbock)
  • Texas Tech University Health Science Center El Paso
  • Texas Tech University Health Science Center Lubbock
  • The University of Dallas
  • The University of Houston
  • The University of Houston Clear Lake
  • The University of Houston Downtown
  • The University of North Texas
  • The University of North Texas Health Science Center
  • The University of Texas at Arlington
  • The University of Texas at Austin
  • The University of Texas at Dallas
  • The University of Texas at El Paso
  • The University of Texas at San Antonio
  • The University of Texas at Tyler
  • The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
  • The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
  • The University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler
  • The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
  • The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston
  • The University of Texas Permian Basin
  • The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
  • The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
  • West Texas A&M University

Contact

Dr. Jeffrey Spies, TLCUA lead negotiator (+1-219-979-6676; press@221b.io)

80,000+ titles added through De Gruyter ALCEP purchase

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Through a purchase by the University of Texas System utilizing funds from the 2022 Academic Library Collection Enhancement Program (ALCEP), the Library provides access to more content for the De Gruyter eBook Subject and University Press Library (UPL) Collections. This purchase fills in the gaps for titles published since previous purchases, as well as UPL course adoption titles that were previously excluded from our license.

New content includes:

  • Columbia University Press eBook Collections (2019-2022)
  • Cornell University Press eBook Collections (2018-2022)
  • Harvard University Press eBook Collections (2019-2022)
  • Princeton University Press eBook Collections (2018-2022)
  • University of Hawaii Press eBook Collections (2018-2022)
  • University of Pennsylvania Press eBook Collections (2019-2022)
  • University of Toronto Press eBook Collections (2018-2022)
  • Yale University Press eBook Collections (2018-2022)
  • De Gruyter Plus eBook Package (2015-2022)
  • Vervuert Iberoamericano eBook Package (2021-2022)
  • Iberoamericana Vervuert eBook Package (2019-2020)

All 80,000+ titles from all purchases are now DRM (digital rights management) free.

Library adds NEJM Journal Watch

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The Library is in the process of starting a subscription to NEJM Journal Watch; the subscription officially begins on January 1st, but the publisher has turned on early access for us through the end of the year. It can be accessed through the Ejournals A to Z page.

NEJM Journal Watch summarizes “the most important research, medical news, drug information, public health alerts, and guidelines across 12 specialties”. Specialty areas include cardiology, general medicine, hospital medicine, infectious diseases, neurology, and oncology and hematology.

Articles are accessible in clinical topic collections and a fully searchable and browsable complete archive. Other valuable information includes Clinical Conversations – podcast; HIV and ID Observations and Insights on Residency Training – blogs; Audio General Medicine – audio interviews with study authors; and CME.

October is National Medical Librarians Month and American Archives Month!

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In fiscal year 2021, Library staff partnered with clients to discover and apply information for clinical, health care, educational, and research purposes, including:

  • Answering over 2,600 reference questions
  • Teaching 374 educational events attended by 1,799 clients
  • Processing over 4,800 interlibrary loans and document delivery requests

Thank you for using the UT Southwestern Health Sciences Library and Digital Learning Center!

Library DEI Committee hosts webinar on LGBTQ+ Healthcare

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Join us on Tuesday, October 11, 2022, for National Coming Out Day. On this day, we celebrate members of the LGBTQ+ community as they share their coming out stories, those of triumph and happiness, as well as those filled with grief and trauma.

A discussion with Leslie McMurray, a local activist, will focus on transgender healthcare and share insights and suggested approaches to LGBTQ+ affirming patient-provider relationships and care. The online discussion will be held at 12 noon. Registration is required.

New Monkeypox Library Guide

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On August 5, 2022, Dallas County declared the monkeypox outbreak a health emergency.  The Health Sciences Digital Library and Learning Center has created a new Monkeypox Library Guide to quickly refer the UT Southwestern community to high-quality – i.e., primarily clinical and research – information about monkeypox. The guide includes: 

  • Monkeypox information from local, state, national and international organizations 
  • Recent articles from PubMed  
  • General search strategies in PubMed and Scopus 
  • Guidelines from CDC and WHO   
  • CDC Monkeypox updates 
  • Consumer health information 
  • Related textbook chapters 

The Guide will be updated as the monkeypox information landscape evolves. Please email the Library if you have identified other key resources that we should consider for inclusion. 

Texas Universities Reach Historic Deal with Elsevier: TLC Saves Texas Universities Millions Collectively

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Texas Library Coalition for United Action (TLCUA) is pleased to announce that it has concluded negotiations with Elsevier, and all TLCUA members have new agreements for subscription  journal access. In 2019, 44 public and private university campuses across Texas joined together to form TLCUA to think creatively about access to faculty publications and the sustainability of journal subscriptions. TLCUA has negotiated with Elsevier, the world’s largest publisher of scientific journals, including The Lancet and Cell and over 2,500 other journals covering topics in medicine, biology, psychology, engineering, business and more. The TLCUA effort aligns with other libraries across academia that have sought to evolve the relationship between libraries and publishers and find new ways to thrive together.

All TLCUA members received a discount on journal subscriptions–some as high as 30%–while still maintaining significant amounts of access to journals and combined, realized millions in savings annually. Beyond initial cost savings, Elsevier agreed to a maximum annual increase of 2% over the course of the license agreement, with some years as low as 0%, which is significantly lower than industry standard.

John Sharp, Chancellor of the Texas A&M University System, said, “Since the beginning of the negotiations, the administration and faculty have stood behind the libraries in this effort. We are proud that so many institutions in Texas came together to realize cost savings and increase access not only in Texas but around the world.”

TLCUA certainly had ambitious goals to negotiate sustainable pricing for strained library budgets in higher education, but also made progress on its other goals of improving access to scholarship and providing authors with greater control over their published work over time.

TLCUA and Elsevier have agreed to partner on a pilot project to revert ownership of journal articles back to original authors—and not just those at TLCUA-member institutions. Currently, authors transfer copyright of their work in exchange for that work being published. This pilot will provide for rights to go back to  authors after a period of time that will be collaboratively determined with Elsevier. A subset of Elsevier journals will be chosen to study the impact of the copyright reversion pilot for authors and its applicability more broadly to STEM (scientific, technical, engineering and medical) publishers.

Further, all TLCUA-member authors who choose to publish their work under an open access license will have access to discounted author publication charges (APCs). TLCUA also negotiated a license template that removed non-disclosure terms, restrictions on sharing usage data, and 44-year-old limitations on interlibrary loans (i.e., CONTU Guidelines) to expand library collaboration and improve how libraries can share information on journal usage.

“We worked very hard with Elsevier leadership and negotiators to come to an agreement that aligns the values and priorities of our members and those held by Elsevier,” says lead negotiator and open access advocate Jeffrey Spies of 221B Consulting. “I am particularly excited about the copyright pilot project. Copyright is an often-overlooked ingredient in securing a more open scholarship, and the library community has a real opportunity here: to work with authors to share their work openly because it will once again be their work.”

Along with Spies, the team negotiating with Elsevier consisted of faculty, library leaders and librarians with collections expertise representing the diverse membership of TLCUA. They are David Carlson, former Dean of University Libraries at Texas A&M University; Kelly Gonzalez, Assistant Vice President for Library Services at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center; Deborah Hathaway, Acquisitions and Collection Development Librarian at the University of Dallas; Ian Knabe, Head of Acquisitions and Resource Sharing at the University of Houston; Asheley Landrum, Assistant Professor of Media and Communication at Texas Tech University; Vagheesh Narasimhan, Assistant Professor of Integrative Biology and Statistics and Data Sciences at the University of Texas Austin; Richard Nollan, former Dean of Libraries at Texas Tech Health Sciences Center; Alexia Thompson-Young, Assistant Director of Scholarly Resources at the University of Texas Austin; Charles Weaver, Department Chair and Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Baylor University; and Ginger Williams, Head Acquisitions Administrative Librarian at Texas State University.

Initial workshops to define the parameters of the pilot project will begin soon. TLCUA has begun exploring their next negotiation priorities and other projects that can benefit from state-wide collaboration. Sara Lowman, TLCUA Chair and Vice Provost and University Librarian at Rice University, is enthusiastic about the future of TLCUA. “The Coalition demonstrated what can be done when Texas institutions aligned by their principles work together. We have big plans,” she said.

About TLCUA

TLCUA represents more than 660,000 students and 44,000 faculty. This consortium is one of the largest and most diverse library consortia in the United States.  Faculty in the Coalition member libraries account for 7.2% of all research output in the United States and about 6% of all U.S. research published by Elsevier. The economic impact of Coalition members is significant with annual expenditures exceeding $275 million.

Current TLCUA members are:

  • Angelo State University
  • Baylor University
  • Lamar University
  • Prairie View A&M University
  • Rice University
  • Sam Houston State University
  • Stephen F. Austin University
  • Sul Ross State University
  • Tarleton State University
  • Texas A&M International University
  • Texas A&M University (College Station)
  • Texas A&M University-Central Texas
  • Texas A&M University-Commerce
  • Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi
  • Texas A&M University-Kingsville
  • Texas A&M University-San Antonio
  • Texas A&M University-Texarkana
  • Texas State University
  • Texas Tech University (Lubbock)
  • Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso
  • Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center Lubbock
  • The TMC Library
  • The University of Texas at Arlington
  • The University of Texas at Austin
  • The University of Texas at Dallas
  • The University of Texas at El Paso
  • The University of Texas Permian Basin
  • The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
  • The University of Texas at San Antonio
  • The University of Texas at Tyler
  • The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
  • The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston
  • The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
  • The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
  • The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
  • The University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler
  • University of Dallas
  • University of Houston
  • University of Houston Clear Lake
  • University of Houston Downtown
  • University of North Texas
  • University of North Texas Health Sciences Center
  • West Texas A&M University

UpToDate Registration/Verification Link for Wi-Fi access

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The Library has added a new UpToDate registration/re-verification link on the Library’s home page to use with registration and 90-day re-verification assistance from a Wi-Fi network. 
If you plan to access UpToDate from a device using campus Wi-Fi, you will need to register for a free UpToDate account using one of the following methods required for initial registration and 90 day campus re-verification:

  • UpToDate through EPIC 
  • UpToDate through EZProxy (i.e. any non-UTSW Wi-Fi connection) 
  • UpToDate through VPN or Citrix 
  • On-Campus wired workstation 

AccessAPN Arrives

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The Library is excited to announce that UT Southwestern now officially subscribes to AccessAPN, offered by McGraw Hill Medical in partnership with Sigma Theta Tau. 
If you are enrolled in an APN program, then the content in AccessAPN aligns with the curricula of Advanced Practice Nursing programs, including those for Nursing Practitioners, Clinical Nurse Specialists, Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists, Certified Nurse Midwives, and Doctors of Nursing Practice. Of course, these resources are available for all UT Southwestern nursing staff – in acute care to ambulatory care and include the following: 

  • Books – more than 40 eBooks on a variety of topics, including clinical information, EBP, informatics, leadership, professional development, and self-care/personal development
  • Cases – materials for short, targeted case-based learning 
  • Review Questions – thousands of Q&A for board exam preparation 

 More information about AccessAPN is available from McGraw Hill, including a Brief Overview of AccessAPN – YouTube, as well as how to set up a MyAccess Profile account to access content remotely and unlock personal account features (e.g., review questions, cases).