We love librarians. They are smart, dedicated people who want to help you with your research. They are often keen on making the world a better place, too. They don’t get enough recognition for all that they do.

They are also, in our experience, unfailingly polite. So, it came as a bit of a shock to discover that the Council of Australasian University Librarians (CAUL) had made demands of Elsevier, the ‘Dutch East India Company’ of the research world, and are not backing down. Here’s the lowdown on what’s happening.

Librarians have been talking with Elsevier for months about a new, fairer publishing deal for Australian and New Zealand academics. Elsevier currently takes publicly funded research and freely provided academic labour and spins it into shareholder profits. Other academic publishing companies do this, too, and there have been impassioned arguments for a less exploitative model for a long time. From more than 10 years ago, for example, Universities ‘get poor value from academic journal-publishing firms’ (2014), or if you prefer a visual version of the argument, there’s the documentary Paywall (“about the costs of academic publishing and the need for open access [OA] to research”). This Wikipedia entry about 2012’s The Cost of Knowledge project has useful background about the issue. Specifically, the project called for academics to boycott Elsevier by withdrawing their labour from the company’s journals. Without the academic labour of editing, reviewing, and writing papers, journals could not exist – researchers provide all this to journals for small to zero recompense.

Elsevier’s parent company, RELX, reported an adjusted operating profit of £1,652,000 for the first half of 2025. That’s a lot of money. Elsevier has pursued a strategy of acquiring business and services that take care of every aspect of the research process. This has given it enormous power in the university research space.

In the ever-polite language of librarians, the Council of Australasian University Librarians has “paused discussions with Elsevier after both parties were unable to reach agreement on major commercial terms, including pricing, agreement structure and inclusion of gold open access journals.” What does that mean? It means that Mum and Dad aren’t talking right now.

It’s not as though the librarians are asking for anything unprecedented. They’ve already struck an in-principle deal with Taylor & Francis that all Australian and New Zealand university research published by Taylor & Francis can be freely accessed by members of the public from 1 January 2026. This is kind of huge. They are negotiating new agreements with Wiley and Springer Nature and they are “confident of reaching a positive outcome with both publishers.” It’s just Elsevier that has taken their bat and ball and gone home.

How can the research community help?

This is a pivotal time in history. On the one side, we have the forces of darkness – individuals and organisations that reject evidence-based reasoning and/or want to lock up the world’s knowledge for their own gain. On the side of light, we have the intrepid librarians fighting (politely) and dedicated academics challenging (often not so politely) the status quo.

We side with those who stay true to the values of open research and equity in sharing and accessing scholarly knowledge. They need our support. There are a lot of ways that we can support them.

Say thank you. If you are working at an Australian or a New Zealand university library, write to your head librarian. Say thank you for the work that they and their team do. Tell them that you support CAULs stand, and that you recognise the importance of what they are doing. Support your local librarian.

Say ‘no’ to Elsevier. There are two sides to this story. At the same time that you are reaffirming your love for all things library, it is important to also affirm where you stand. Until this dispute is resolved:

• Do not submit to Elsevier journals.
• Do not review for Elsevier.
• Pause your work on Elsevier editorial committees.
• Boycott Elsevier and all its works and all its empty promises.

Withdraw your (free) labour. It is the simplest and most powerful statement that you can make.

Tell others what you are doing. Elsevier is a for-profit company. They understand the power of organised labour and they fear it. That is why for-profit companies spend so much time trying to break unions – because they work. Let’s get organised. Let’s give them something to fear. But that only works if you tell others what you are doing. Bring others into the fold. Doing the right thing makes you feel good. Telling others that you are doing the right thing can give them the strength to resist as well.

• Add a rider to your email signature, telling people what you are doing.
• Add it to the agenda for your next research committee meeting. (Frankly, it’ll probably be the most interesting thing on the agenda, so go ahead.)
• Print out this post and pin it to your door (as if any of us have doors anymore).
• If you are a union member, ask your union to get involved.

In all things, remember that librarians are polite. Be like librarians. Engage in passionate but polite discourse about this matter. Make some noise.

Visit the library. When was the last time that you actually went into your university library? These days, many researchers have forgotten that their university has a real, physical library. Or not exactly forgotten, but perhaps lost touch with it. Take a lunchtime. Take a book (even an electronic one) that you’ve been meaning to read. Wander over to your local library. Check it out. Renew the acquaintance. If your university library is like our university library, you will find a thriving place that hosts art exhibitions, support services, discussion groups and is a haven for people who love geeking out on their favourite subject.

Respond as an institution. As academics, we are not the customers of Elsevier, we are the end users. Our universities are their customers. So, get organised within your university. Ask the key people to take up the challenge on your behalf. Who are those people?

• Your university librarian
• Your Deputy Vice Chancellor Research
• Your Head of Finance
• Your Vice Chancellor
• Your Chancellor

These are the people who need to understand what is going on, and who need to move quickly. Ask them to organise for your university to issue a statement, take a stand, and make a difference. Ask them to do the right thing on behalf of researchers and the institution.

They probably won’t want to stand alone either, so we’ll finish with a quote from our own Vice Chancellor, Professor Iain Martin, who also happens to be the CAUL Open Access Negotiation Strategy Commitee Chair. He has taken a stand already:

“Elsevier is an important publishing partner for the sector, and we remain committed to re-engaging with them on a sustainable pricing framework,” Professor Martin said.

“Our sector, and indeed, our community should have confidence that our agreement with one of the world’s largest and most profitable publishers is fair and reasonable. We remain hopeful of achieving that.”