Brock Library is closely monitoring the progress of these negotiations, as the terms will impact our renewal decisions. Rising license costs, and sustained budget constraints have intensified the need for long-term, financially sustainable approaches. 

As you may remember, in 2025, due to said budgetary constraints, the library had to cancel our Springer subscription.

Our national consortium, CRKN, will be the chief negotiators on these renewals, and their goal is to secure agreements that better balance access, affordability, and long-term sustainability for Canadian research institutions. CRKN is taking a coordinated approach with these vendors, by negotiating them all at once. We have seen similar national strategies being successfully implemented in parts of Europe, where consortia have leveraged collective bargaining to achieve stronger pricing controls and more robust transformative open access agreements.

CRKN is a national consortium who has 88 members across Canada that include academic libraries and research institutions, two national libraries, and Canada’s largest public library system. For more information, please visit their website https://www.crkn-rcdr.ca/en/about-crkn .

Canada’s research community depends on a scholarly communications ecosystem that supports high-quality research, collaboration, and broad access to knowledge.  

The current commercial publishing model has reached a point of unsustainability. Agreements with the largest commercial publishers continue to grow in cost, even as university budgets face sustained pressure from tuition freezes, reduced public funding, declining international student enrolment, and a weak Canadian dollar. With licenses priced primarily in USD, foreign exchange volatility further erodes purchasing power, limiting institutions’ ability to absorb rising costs. 

These 2026 negotiations are a critical opportunity to try and align licensing agreements with the financial realities facing Canadian institutions, protect author and user rights, and advance sustainable, transparent publishing models that support open access without shifting additional costs onto libraries. Sustaining access to scholarly content is not solely a library issue—it is a national research concern that affects students, researchers, institutions, and Canada’s long-term research competitiveness. 

We are taking a unified collective front with these vendors and because of this, they may try and reach out looking for information or to set up subscriptions directly. We ask that you decline any direct discussions with these publishers and direct them to reach out to Gordon Coleman, Associate University Librarian, Research at [email protected] .

These contracts directly affect research output, teaching, competitiveness, and student learning.

No, it’s research infrastructure. Access to journals is as fundamental as labs, databases, and computing resources. Without sustainable agreements, research capacity declines.

We want to prevent disruption, but successful negotiations depend on institutions supporting sustainable terms so access can continue long-term rather than becoming financially unstable.

Individual universities have less leverage. National coordination is the only way to counter multinational publisher pricing power.

• Continued access to Canadian and international research outputs

• Fewer or no article processing charges with open access agreements 

• More open dissemination of Canadian research 

• By securing more sustainable pricing from these 5 commercial agreements, libraries will have more flexibility in ensuring our collections meet the needs of our university’s community