Bibsam Consortium


Bibsam Consortium is a consortium where 85 higher education and research institutions in Sweden participate to negotiate license agreements for electronic
information resources. The consortium is head by the National Library of Sweden which negotiate and administrate license agreements for e-resource packages. The participating institutions sign a power of attorney which allows the National Librarian to sign contracts with the e-resource providers.

History and Scope

Bibsam Consortium was formed in 1996 in order to negotiate license agreements for electronic resources on behalf of Swedish Universities, research institutes and government agencies in Sweden. The total turnover of the agreements in 2015 was € 33 million and was € 35 million in 2017. Out of this, 73% of the turnover is from the ten large universities of Sweden. There are six members in National Library of Sweden to negotiate and administrate the 100 license agreements for approximately 40 e-resource packages.

Negotiation with Elsevier

In 2018, Bibsam Consortium terminated its agreement with Elsevier publishers in order to stop rising prices of publishing and to support open access publishing. The termination took into effect by 1 July 2018, and Swedish Universities and colleges do not have access to 2100 e-journals published by Elsevier. However, all articles published between 1 January 1995 and 30 June 2018 will still be available. Astrid Söderbergh Widding, President of Stockholm University, Chairman of the Bibsam consortium steering committee and Head of the negotiation team, said:
The requirements that Bibsam Consortium asks for are: