2026 License Negotiations
About the Negotiations
CRKN’s 2026 negotiations are taking place amid significant pressures across the scholarly communications ecosystem. Rising license costs, foreign exchange volatility, and sustained budget constraints facing Canadian universities and libraries have intensified the need for long-term, financially sustainable approaches.
CRKN enters the 2026 negotiations with a continued commitment to working collaboratively with publisher partners to achieve agreements that deliver shared value. Our focus is on sustaining access to high-quality research, supporting a responsible transition to open access, and ensuring that pricing and terms reflect the financial realities of our members. Guided by CRKN’s licensing principles, these negotiations will prioritize transparency, affordability, and long-term sustainability, reinforcing partnerships that serve the interests of researchers, institutions, and the broader public.
What Makes This Year Different
In 2026, CRKN is negotiating concurrently with all five of the largest commercial publishers—Elsevier, Sage, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley. Taking a coordinated approach reflects the scale of their collective impact on member budgets and enables CRKN to apply its licensing principles consistently across agreements. This strategy supports fair, sustainable outcomes while reinforcing CRKN’s commitment to collaboration and long-term partnerships.
Governance
CRKN’s negotiations are sector-led and governed through established Board and committee structures. The Content Strategy Committee (CSC), a standing committee of the CRKN Board of Directors, oversees all content negotiations by developing and recommending negotiation objectives, principles, and strategies to the Board. Working closely with CRKN staff, the CSC ensures negotiations are aligned with member priorities and guided by a consistent, expert-informed approach.
2026 Negotiation Principles
Our 2026 Negotiation Principles will guide CRKN’s approach to the 2026 publisher negotiations, ensuring alignment with member priorities and long-term sustainability. They were developed by CRKN’s Content Strategy Committee, bringing together expert insight from across the research and library community.
Sustainable Scholarly Communications
We aim to substantially lower agreement costs for CRKN members. We will reduce costs and achieve fair sustainable pricing that ensures that the transition to open access does not add cost for libraries. We will support publishers that prioritize research integrity and quality over unsustainable article growth business models.
Author Rights
We will ensure that authors from CRKN institutions retain their rights and maintain full control over their research, including the choice of publication methods, and that publishers communicate clearly to authors their choices with respect to open access, license choice, deposit, and compliance with funder policies.
User Rights
We will ensure that users from CRKN institutions can use licensed content in ways that maximize the effectiveness of their research, teaching, learning, and other non-commercial activities. This includes performing computational analysis (including text and data mining) and the responsible use of artificial intelligence tools for educational and research purposes.
Open Access Scholarship
We will negotiate agreements that offer uncapped open access publication for all authors affiliated with CRKN member institutions that are, at-minimum, cost-neutral for libraries, and that do not impose additional fees for the right to deposit Author Accepted Manuscripts (AAMs) in institutional, subject, or national repositories in compliance with any applicable funder open access mandates.
Transparency
We make all license agreements publicly available and reject non-disclosure clauses. Global transparency promotes equal access to information, builds trust, and supports fair negotiations. We expect our publisher partners to respect and abide by applicable privacy laws and regulations, and to operate transparently with respect to how they manage and protect data collected from CRKN users.
Open Data and Interoperability
We will negotiate agreements which require publishers to make reasonable efforts to support and cooperate with open infrastructure services such as OA Switchboard, ORCID, Crossref, and others to promote open metadata and streamline the workflow process for authors, libraries, and CRKN.
Timeline
This tentative timeline is provided to support members and stakeholders in understanding the anticipated workflow of the negotiations.
Content Strategy Committee finalizes negotiation objectives, principles, and Request for Proposal (RFP) framework ✓
CRKN Board reviews and approves negotiation principles and objectives ✓
CRKN meets with publishers at the OLA Super Conference and alerts them to the impending RFP ✓
CRKN reaches out to potential Stakeholder Alignment Group members and organizes an introductory meeting ✓
CRKN publishes negotiation principles on its website
CRKN delivers the RFP to vendors
CRKN hosts an introductory meeting with the Stakeholder Alignment Group
CRKN convenes a meeting of the Stakeholder Alignment Group and all five publishers to present collective priorities and shared principles
Deadline for first proposals from all vendors
CRKN Licensing Team and Content Strategy Committee review proposals and determine next steps
Potential webinar for negotiation updates for the members to confirm support for our collective strategies
Member Summit
CRKN members are kept informed and engaged throughout the negotiation process, including on any next steps that may require collective support
Why These Negotiations Matter
Canada’s research community depends on a scholarly communications ecosystem that supports high-quality research, collaboration, and broad access to knowledge. Canadian researchers produce globally impactful work, often in partnership with international peers, and libraries play a critical role in sustaining the infrastructure that enables discovery, teaching, and innovation.
However, 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.
CRKN’s 2026 negotiations are therefore about more than cost containment. They are a critical opportunity to realign 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.
Facts & Stats
Rising Costs
The Big Five agreements now consume 28% of CRKN members' library collection budgets—up from 22% in 2020-21—leaving fewer resources for other investments and the transition to open science.
Reduced international student enrolment
Canadian universities are facing steep drops in international student enrolment, a key revenue source that has long offset stagnant public funding.
Tuition freezes & tightening government funding
With no ability to adjust tuition, institutions have little flexibility to respond to escalating budget pressures. For example, Ontario universities are projecting $265m in deficits in 2025-26.
Weak Canadian Dollar
With licenses priced in USD, every drop in the Canadian dollar directly increases costs for Canadian institutions.
Members can login to see the negotiation progress tracker and stakeholder engagement resources below: