> Note this announcement doesn't say anything about submitting to journals, or even UC researchers no longer doing that.
The policy which resulted in it—UC’s push for open access for public-funded research, and Elsevier’s unwillingness to allow open access on terms UC was willing to accept—implies that, should the breach not be healed, there will eventually be a problem for at least some subset of UC researchers publishing in Elsevier journals.
> implies that, should the breach not be healed, there will eventually be a problem for at least some subset of UC researchers publishing in Elsevier journals.
If UC’s policy goal is open access for public-funded research, eventually (whether they have a deal with publishers providing blanket terms for this or not), they are presumably going to adopt (or be part of convincing some public funding authorities to adopt) a policy with either concrete disincentives or an outright prohibition on research with certain funding sources being published in a way which doesn't provide open access.
Maybe, but at the moment that would cause a faculty uproar.
Someone else pointed out that a UC Office of Scholarly Communication page from while negotiations were ongoing reassured faculty that:
> No matter what happens, UC authors retain the right to publish in the journal of their choice.
> By providing article processing charge (APC) support through the UC Libraries as well as an opt-out option, UC is working hard to ensure that authors have maximum flexibility in determining where and how they want to publish.
If they try to start telling faculty where they can or can't publish, faculty are gonna be really mad. I think UC is trying to figure out how to advance their financial and business agenda here _without_ making faculty mad, which is why they were reassuring faculty that these negotiations would not impact their right to publish in the journals of their choice.
The policy which resulted in it—UC’s push for open access for public-funded research, and Elsevier’s unwillingness to allow open access on terms UC was willing to accept—implies that, should the breach not be healed, there will eventually be a problem for at least some subset of UC researchers publishing in Elsevier journals.