Elsevier access in 2026

In recent months, all New Zealand and Australian universities have been working together to negotiate a better deal with the four largest global academic publishers. Negotiations with three of the publishers have been successful, but the most recent offer from Elsevier remains a significant distance from meeting the universities' expectations with respect to cost, securing fair access, improving transparency, and supporting a healthy publishing ecosystem that works for Australia and New Zealand. 

Negotiations will continue, but when our current agreement expires on December 31, 2025, we will temporarily lose some degree of access to Elsevier's journals until a new contract is agreed.  In similar overseas experiences, negotiations have taken 6 to 18 months. The library has been working to assess and mitigate the impact on learning, teaching and research at Lincoln University, and has identified alternative strategies for:

Accessing journal articles

Over 30% of content is now published as Open Access.

We will also keep perpetual access for some pre-purchased collections of older content.

Many authors have deposited an "author's accepted manuscript" to their university's open access archive. There'll often be an indication of this in LibrarySearch; you can search Google or Google Scholar; or you can install the Unpaywall browser extension.

Authors are also allowed (and usually very happy!) to share a copy of their paper if you email them.

Postgraduates and staff can make interloan requests if articles can't be found another way.

Publishing

Consider whether publishing in a journal from another publisher might be right for you. This will depend on the topic and expected audience of your article: read more about deciding where to publish.

For Elsevier journals, check in the Publish menu > Open access options and:

• If it offers authors two choices to publish, choose the “subscription” model. Save all draft versions of your article as it moves through the review process. When your final draft is accepted by the publisher, upload that "author's accepted manuscript" (including peer review corrections, but without the publisher’s branding) to Elements. The Library will make this available open access at the appropriate time.
• If it only offers the open access option requiring an APC then you can apply to Lincoln's APC fund (criteria and fund limits apply).

Teaching

The Library is reviewing Elsevier articles on current reading lists. We've already identified alternative access methods for the majority of these. We will contact lecturers directly to discuss options for the remainder.

The Library is also actively exploring other tools and strategies that may be appropriate for Lincoln University and will update this page if they're adopted. This page was last updated 9 December 2025.