Read&Publish agreement with Elsevier 2025-2028

After a no-deal phase at the beginning of the year, and new negotiations in the following months, the new publishing agreement with the scientific publisher Elsevier finally comes into force at USI and the other Swiss universities.

This type of agreement is implemented by the USI Libraries; it combines reading access to the publishers' periodicals with the possibility of publishing free of charge in Open Access while minimising cost increases. These are further important additions to the realisation of the Swiss National Open Access (OA) Strategy.

The agreement with Elsevier guarantees full reading access to Elsevier's entire journal portfolio. In addition, USI researchers are allowed to publish in OA on an unlimited basis and at no additional cost in more than 2,500 Elsevier journals, including the journals of the Cell Press and The Lancet groups.

Free OA publication is possible provided that a researcher is under contract with USI and simultaneously is the corresponding author of the article.

USI affiliation must also be correctly indicated to the publisher during the publication process. We recommend using your institutional e-mail address @usi.ch for article submission.

The agreement also explicitly regulates the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in connection with licensed content. It also guarantees members of Swiss universities great freedom in the use of AI tools for analysing Elsevier publications in the context of research, teaching and innovation. To find out about contractual terms and restrictions in this area, researchers can contact the University Library Lugano.

We take this opportunity to remind you that USI, in addition to concluding agreements with individual publishers, financially supports the publication of Gold OA articles by its researchers, where they are not already funded within an FNS project. The USI Libraries are available to provide further information on "Read & Publish" agreements, as well as on OA publication in general.