CRKN Licensing: Back to Basics
By: Allison Loveridge, Licensing and Member Services Officer
https://doi.org/10.82389/jcfy-w624
Academic Licensing in Canada
CRKN facilitates more than 50 license agreements for academic content and platforms, but what does that actually mean? Does every CRKN member automatically get access to all that content?
Let’s talk about it!
At its core, CRKN’s Licensing team acts as an intermediary between academic content providers and Canadian academic libraries. We negotiate equitable, transparent agreements on behalf of our members, with a focus on equitable access, sustainability, and open scholarship. The content covered under these agreements includes journals, eBooks, primary source databases, and platforms, with access in the form of subscriptions and one-time purchases. Though agreements can also be in relation to open access publishing.
The takeaway: CRKN does not provide a central catalogue of content. Instead, we negotiate agreements on behalf of members that they can then choose to join.
Participation in these license agreements is optional. If a member chooses to participate in a given agreement, they must submit a financial commitment form and pay the required subscription or purchase fee to the publisher or vendor. Meaning, CRKN undertakes the negotiation process to bolster collective bargaining and secure favourable terms. We are not an academic content repository.
What We Negotiate
CRKN works with a wide range of publishers and organizations across the scholarly ecosystem. This includes commercial publishers like Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, and SAGE, as well as university presses like Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press. We also work and partner with Canadian organizations such as Canadian Science Publishing, along with society publishers such as American Chemical Society, Institute of Physics, and other consortia.
Examples of the licenses we facilitate:
- With Elsevier, CRKN manages an agreement for Scopus and a read and publish agreement for Elsevier journals.
- Through Ithaka, CRKN has agreements for JSTOR and ARTstor.
- For eBooks, we have agreements with De Gruyter for University Press Libraries and Canadian University Presses.
- CRKN maintains an agreement with Jisc for the Journal Usage Statistics Portal.
- Through a memorandum of understanding with the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), participating members receive ICPSR membership.
Behind each agreement is a significant amount of negotiation work: member webinars and consultations, data analysis, objective setting, proposals, counterproposals, and committee and Board input. By negotiating collectively, CRKN helps members secure financial terms that are more sustainable and more consistent licence terms than could typically be achieved by members individually.
Open Access Publishing
Open access (OA) is central to our strategy. Guided by our members and the Content Strategy Committee, CRKN actively pursues agreements and initiatives that advance sustainable scholarly communication and increase the volume of openly accessible research.
CRKN and the Érudit consortium collaborated to create the Partnership for Open Access (POA). This critical partnership provides financial support to Canadian non-commercial scholarly journals through the ongoing commitment of library partners and is based on a close partnership between all stakeholders of the research ecosystem.
Members can also participate in the community open access initiatives SCOAP³ and SCOSS. These initiatives allow CRKN to work with institutions, organizations, and publishers to create a more accessible and equitable scholarly landscape.
In addition, CRKN has negotiated nine read and publish agreements with various publishers. These agreements repurpose libraries’ existing expenditures on journal subscriptions to cover both read access and open access publishing. In doing so, the article processing charges (APCs) that authors from participating member institutions may encounter when publishing open access are waived.
$0M
in total APC cost avoidance in 2025
Across Sage, Wiley & Elsevier
$0
Avg APC list price per article
Published for $0 to researchers0
CRKN articles published in 2025
Separate from read and publish agreements, CRKN has also secured APC discounts with select publishers. These discounts range from 10% to 40% and can be applied to publishing open access articles in gold and hybrid journals, depending on the publisher. While separate from read and publish agreements, these agreements, nonetheless, help reduce the barriers that often prevent authors from publishing open access.
The Bottom Line
With so many agreements and pathways to participation, the CRKN licensing landscape can seem complex, but the underlying objective is straightforward.
CRKN does not maintain a central catalogue of academic content. We negotiate and facilitate license agreements on behalf of our members, in which they can optionally participate. The benefit lies in the power of collective negotiating, improved licence terms, and cost containment that would be difficult to achieve alone.
At the same time, our licensing strategy reflects a clear commitment to open access and sustainable scholarly communication. By combining collective negotiation with support for community-led initiatives, CRKN works to ensure that Canadian institutions have affordable access to research while helping move scholarly communications toward a more open and sustainable future.
Allison Loveridge (https://orcid.org/0009-0000-2628-0969)
Allison holds two BAs from McMaster University and a MLIS from Western University. She is passionate about making information sustainably and equitably accessible. You can contact her at aloveridge@crkn.ca.