Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden

On 31 December 2018, the contract between the Acquisition Consortium of Saxon University Libraries and Elsevier for the purchase of journals expired. In consultation with the rectorate of the TU Dresden, the SLUB, like many other institutions in Germany, has decided not to renew the Elsevier licences for reasons of science policy.

We will thus support the negotiations of the DEAL Negotiating Group, whose aim is to secure an adequate supply of literature for research and teaching at the national level in the long term. This includes price transparency as well as the planned transformation towards Open Access publication models. In this letter, we provide information on the particular difficulties with the major publisher Elsevier. Information on the current status of the negotiations can be found on the DEAL Group's website, in particular on its blog: https://www.projekt-deal.de/aktuelles-blog-start/ 

The supply of our users with articles from Elsevier magazines is guaranteed even before the successful conclusion of the negotiations.

• The SLUB holds the archive rights for some Elsevier journals until 31 December 2015. They are still accessible via ScienceDirect.
  
  
• In addition, the Open Archive of Elsevier is at your disposal, where articles are available according to the Moving-Wall principle.
  
  
• Newer literature from Elsevier journals can be obtained via our interlibrary loan service. Until recently, the licensed Elsevier journals have been available to TU members and registered SLUB users free of charge. In order to keep the restrictions for you as low as possible, we are suspending the interlibrary loan fees of 1.50 € per order for all registered users of the SLUB Dresden until further notice.
  Please order your desired article via our interlibrary loan portal (slubdd.de/fernleihe). The delivery time for interlibrary loan orders is generally one to two weeks. We can make available Elsevier articles from e-Only journals much faster. For orders that can be served from print journals and whose volume is more than 20 pages, you will be charged a fee. For details on the interlibrary loan procedure, please refer to our interlibrary loan website.

Discontinuing the licensing of its products, we hope that we and many other scientific and information institutions in Germany will be able to persuade Elsevier to adopt more science-friendly distribution models. Thank you for your understanding and support.

You can read more about Open Access and the corresponding services offered by the SLUB here.