Is this the first time Elsevier has cut off a major group of universities? In all the similar past occasions I know about, Elsevier would threaten to cut off ac

Is this the first time Elsevier has cut off a major group of universities? In all the similar past occasions I know about, Elsevier would threaten to cut off access but not flow through, out of the kindness of their hearts and for the good of academia (or rather for fear that the universities might discover they don’t get much value out of Elsevier) One thing Elsevier builds their strategy on is bundling: that to get the journals a university really wants, they also have to subscribe to lots they don’t want. This would mean for Elsevier that they could keep charging high prices until all disciplines don’t care about them. A university can’t say “well all our mathematicians just use the arxiv and email so we don’t want any mathematics journals” and have this work. Another common theme is universities joining together into larger groups to negotiate a deal together. But this means individual universities can’t really choose to not subscribe to any Elsevier journals (because others in the group want to subscribe), so often they still get what many inside consider a bad deal.