Slovenian Consortium and Elsevier Establish Transformative Agreement

London | May 23, 2022 - Elsevier, a global leader in research publishing and information analytics, has established its first transformative agreement with Slovenian ScienceDirect Consortium of universities, institutes and hospitals (Slovenian Consortium). The agreement will benefit the member institutions with access to Elsevier's extensive collection of journals on ScienceDirect, and enable their affiliated authors to publish their research open access in Elsevier journals. The cost of publishing open access is covered under the terms of the agreement which will run for three years until December 2024.

Prof Gregor Majdič, Rector of the University of Ljubljana and President of the Slovenian Rectors’ Conference, stated that the new Slovenian research legislation is in line with the European Research Area trends, mandating immediate open access to scientific publications. Therefore, Slovenian research organisations are aiming for open access bibliodiversity and welcome transitional transformative agreements with academic publishers, as these would further promote openness of scientific publications. Prof Majdič said: “We look forward to expanded opportunities for open access publishing in Elsevier journals, made possible by the transformative agreement. This is in line with new important developments in scientific publishing and will help bridge the gap between scientists and the general public.”

Miro Pušnik, director of Central Technical Library at the University of Ljubljana, said: “With this transformative agreement the Slovenian research organizations have ensured that needs of their researchers are met. The agreement provides a suitable infrastructure for open publications in accordance with the principles of the Horizon Europe program, the principles of cOAlition S (of which the Slovenian Research Agency is a member), and the principles of the newly adopted Slovenian research legislation. The new legislation includes strict requirements for open publication of all results from publicly funded research.”.

The Slovenian ScienceDirect Consortium was founded in 2001 and represents sixteen public institutions across Slovenia. It is financially supported by the national research funder, the Slovenian Research Agency.

Felix Haest, VP Sales Elsevier, said: "We are delighted to be working with the Slovenian Consortium. We are thrilled to have agreed to our first transformative agreement with them to ensure Slovenian researchers can access high-quality research and publish openly with Elsevier, enabling them to share their work globally."

Elsevier aims to find the right solutions to meet the diverse needs of academic institutions, students, researchers, and funders worldwide while ensuring published research remains trusted and of high quality. Our approach with all customers is to understand their objectives and work with them to achieve these in an economically sustainable way while preserving the quality, integrity, and sustainability of the peer-review publishing system.

As one of the fastest-growing open access publishers in the world, nearly all of Elsevier's 2,700 journals enable open access publishing, including 600 fully open access journals. We now support over 2,000 institutions globally to publish open access through transformative agreements. In 2021 Elsevier published 119,000 gold or pay-to-publish open access articles, an increase of more than 46% over 2020.

For more on how Elsevier supports open access, please visit our website.

About Slovenian ScienceDirect Consortium

The Slovenian Consortium for Science Direct includes sixteen public institutions. The cooperation with Elsevier started in 2001. The transformative agreement is a result of a successful collaboration between the publisher and the consortium members.

About Elsevier

As a global leader in information and analytics, Elsevier helps researchers and healthcare professionals advance science and improve health outcomes for the benefit of society. We do this by facilitating insights and critical decision-making for customers across the global research and health ecosystems.

In everything we publish, we uphold the highest standards of quality and integrity. We bring that same rigor to our information analytics solutions for researchers, health professionals, institutions, and funders.

Elsevier employs 8,100 people worldwide. We have supported the work of our research and health partners for more than 140 years. Growing from our roots in publishing, we offer knowledge and valuable analytics that help our users make breakthroughs and drive societal progress. Digital solutions such as ScienceDirect, Scopus, LCUA, ClinicalKey and Sherpath support strategic research management, R&D performance, clinical decision support, and health education. Researchers and healthcare professionals rely on our 2,700+ digitized journals, including The Lancet and Cell; our 40,000 eBook titles; and our iconic reference works, such as Gray's Anatomy. With the Elsevier Foundation and our external Inclusion & Diversity Advisory Board, we work in partnership with diverse stakeholders to advance inclusion and diversity in science, research and healthcare in developing countries and around the world.

 Elsevier is part of RELX, a global provider of information-based analytics and decision tools for professional and business customers. www.elsevier.com