South Korean universities strike agreement with Elsevier

A group of hundreds of South Korean universities has agreed to a price hike of about 3.5 per cent for continued access to Elsevier’s journals.

An agreement was reached on 12 January after a month-long standoff between the universities and Elsevier over access to the ScienceDirect website and its 3,500 journals, the news arm of the journal Science reported on 15 January.

Elsevier had attempted to increase the price for access by 4.5 per cent, but reached a deal with the universities to cut this increase to between 3.5 and 3.9 per cent, according to Science.