Canadian Research Community Alignment on CRKN’s 2026 License Negotiations
Leaders from across Canada’s research ecosystem endorse CRKN’s 2026 negotiation principles, calling for sustainable pricing, open access, and greater transparency in scholarly publishing.
Senior leaders from across the scholarly communications ecosystem have come together in support of the Canadian Research Knowledge Network’s 2026 negotiation principles advocating for sustainable scholarly communications, open access, and the responsible use of public funds.
Background
The Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) is a consortium of 88 member institutions, primarily university libraries, that leads Canada’s national license negotiations for scholarly content. This year, CRKN is strategically negotiating with the five largest 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.
The Stakeholder Alignment Group
The Stakeholder Alignment Group (SAG) brings together senior leaders from across the scholarly communications ecosystem who are supportive of CRKN’s position in the 2026 negotiations. Representing a range of institutions, funders, and sector organizations, SAG members help demonstrate broad, cross-sector alignment around the need for sustainable, equitable publishing models. The group comprises senior leaders from across Canada’s research ecosystem, including university presidents, research funding bodies, and chief scientists.
Support for CRKN's Negotiating Principles
All members of the Stakeholder Alignment group have signed onto a letter of support illustrating the strong backing from Canada's research and education community for CRKN’s negotiating principles:
Statement of Support: Canadian Research Community Alignment on CRKN’s 2026 License Negotiations
We, the undersigned, support the Canadian Research Knowledge Network’s (CRKN) 2026 negotiation principles and strategy. CRKN’s vision, to make knowledge accessible to all, is realized through its goal to drive the evolution of open knowledge by delivering a commercial licensing program that ensures ethical and socially responsible spending of public money, increases access to research, and advances open scholarship through enhanced open access options.
CRKN’s Negotiation Principles for 2026 License Renewals:
- Sustainable Scholarly Communications
- Author Rights
- User Rights
- Open Access Scholarship
- Transparency
- Open Data and Interoperability
The Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) undertakes negotiations on behalf of its members and the entire research enterprise in Canada, to enable equitable, sustainable access to scholarly knowledge. The negotiation principles set by CRKN are endorsed by the pan-Canadian academic community and highlight the Canadian response to shifts in the scholarly communication system. This approach reinforces that the sustainability of scholarly communications is not solely a library concern, but a national issue that affects researchers, students, institutions, and the public interest.
The current commercial publishing model is unsustainable: Despite CRKN’s success in minimizing annual cost increases through collective negotiation, publisher prices continue to rise leading to substantial profit margins. CRKN member institutions, however, are facing stagnant and shrinking budgets compounded by reduced international student enrolment, tuition freezes, and tightening government funding. The result is a growing imbalance between the escalating cost of publishing and access and the financial capacity of Canadian institutions. We stand behind CRKN in its efforts to significantly reduce the costs of journal licenses to a level that is sustainable for Canadian universities.
Author rights must be protected and respected: Researchers affiliated with Canadian institutions must retain rights over their scholarly outputs, including how and where their work is published. We support CRKN’s commitment to ensuring that publishers communicate clearly and transparently with authors regarding open access options, licensing choices, deposit rights, and compliance with funder policies, thereby safeguarding academic freedom, research integrity, and informed decision-making.
User rights are essential to effective research and learning: The value of licensed content is realized through its active use in research, teaching, and learning. We endorse CRKN’s efforts to ensure that users can engage with licensed materials in ways that maximize their scholarly and educational impact, including computational analysis, text and data mining, and the responsible use of artificial intelligence tools for non-commercial research and educational purposes.
Open access scholarship is a foundational priority: A sustainable and equitable scholarly communications system depends on broad and immediate access to research outputs. We support CRKN’s objective to negotiate agreements that provide uncapped open access publishing for authors at CRKN member institutions, are at minimum cost-neutral for libraries, and preserve the right to deposit Author Accepted Manuscripts in institutional, subject, or national repositories in compliance with funder mandates.
Transparency is critical to responsible stewardship and trust: Global advocacy for transparency has demonstrated its importance in supporting fair negotiations and equitable access to knowledge. We reaffirm our support for CRKN’s commitment to making license agreements publicly available, rejecting non-disclosure clauses, and expecting publisher partners to operate transparently with respect to pricing, terms, and the collection, management, and protection of user data in accordance with applicable privacy laws.
Open data and interoperability strengthen the research ecosystem: An effective scholarly communications system relies on open, interoperable infrastructure that reduces administrative burden and supports efficient workflows. We endorse CRKN’s commitment to negotiating agreements that require publishers to cooperate with open infrastructure services and standards, enabling open metadata, improved interoperability, and greater efficiency for authors, libraries, and the broader research community.
We have reached a critical inflection point in which the financial and systemic challenges facing research institutions make the costs of the commercial publishing model untenable. We collectively support CRKN’s negotiation principles for its license agreements with Elsevier, Sage, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley and affirm our commitment to advancing sustainable, transparent, and equitable outcomes for the Canadian research community.
Signed
Dr. Alejandro Adem — President, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
Dr. Kim Brooks — President, Dalhousie University; CRKN Board Chair
Dr. Paul Hébert — President, Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)
Dr. Joy Johnson — President, Simon Fraser University
Mr. Daniel Jutras — Rector, Université de Montréal
Dr. Normand Labrie — Interim President, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)
Ms. Karine Morin — President and CEO, Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences (FHSS)
Dr. Mona Nemer — Chief Science Advisor, Government of Canada
Dr. Rémi Quirion — Chief Scientist of Québec
Dr. Alan Shepard — President, Western University
Dr. Melanie Woodin — President, University of Toronto