---
title: "The Cost of Knowledge"
chunk: 2/2
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cost_of_Knowledge"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:48:51.315386+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Impact and reception ===
In February 2012, analysts of the Exane Paribas bank reported a financial impact on Elsevier with the company's stock prices falling due to the boycott. Dennis Snower criticised the monopoly of scientific publishers, but said at the same time that he did not support the boycott even though he himself is the editor-in-chief of an open-access journal on economics. He thinks that more competition among the various journals should instead be encouraged. The Senate of the University of Kansas has been reported to consider joining the boycott of Elsevier.
In allusion to the revolutions of the Arab Spring, the German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily newspaper called the movement the "Academic Spring" (German: Akademischer Frühling). When the British Wellcome Trust made a commitment to open up science, The Guardian similarly called this the "Academic Spring". After the Wellcome Trust announcement, The Cost of Knowledge campaign was recognized by that newspaper as the start of something new.
A 2016 study evaluating the boycott stated that in the past four years 38% of signatories had abandoned their "won't publish in an Elsevier outlet" commitment and that only around 5000 researchers were still clearly boycotting Elsevier by publishing elsewhere. It concludes "Few researchers have signed the petition in recent years, thus giving the impression the boycott has run its course." As of August 2025, there were 20,908 signatories.
Protests against high fees have rolled through into many institutional actions. As an example, in 2019, the University of California (UC) system announced that it was cancelling its Elsevier subscriptions, citing costs and lack of open access. Similar steps were taken by other universities, including MIT in 2020, SUNY in 2020, Florida State University in 2018, UNC Chapel Hill in 2020, and Louisiana State University in 2019. In 2021, the UC system negotiated a new 4-year "pilot" agreement with Elsevier that permits UC researchers to publish in Elsevier journals on an open-access basis and restores access to Elsevier journals for UC libraries, following similar open-access agreements with Carnegie Mellon University in 2019 (for 4 years) and the Norwegian university system in 2019 (for 2 years).

== See also ==
Serials crisis

== References ==

== External links ==
Official website
Gowers, Timothy (21 January 2012). "Elsevier – my part in its downfall". Gowers's Weblog. WordPress.com. – The blog post associated with the start of the campaign
Elsevier's open letter response
collection of media coverage of The Cost of Knowledge