“One hundred days have now passed since the contract with Elsevier was terminated. The cancellation has received a lot of attention, both from within Sweden and abroad. Questions and comments from researchers to libraries have been much fewer than expected, something which can partly be explained by the summer vacation period, but most probably due to the fact that users have not been greatly affected since they still have uninterrupted access to all material published until the first of July 2018.

Comments from researchers have been both positive and negative. The support for open access is strong and many also regard the high profit margins of the publisher as unreasonable. Those with negative comments mostly concern problems accessing the articles they need for their research. All comments receive a reply with a description of the current situation, and underline the fact that all Swedish Vice-Chancellors collectively stand behind the recommendation to terminate the contract.

Some higher education institutions (HEIs) have used the money saved post-cancellation to pay for their researchers’ article processing charges in pure open access journals. Part of the money has also been used to pay for the extra costs involved when important articles have to be ordered via on-demand document delivery services….”