Groundbreaking deal makes large number of German studies free to public
Three years ago, a group of German libraries, universities, and research institutes teamed up to force the three largest scientific publishers to offer an entirely new type of contract. In exchange for an annual lump sum, they wanted a nationwide agreement making papers by German authors free to read around the world, while giving researchers in Germany access to all of the publishers' online content.
Today, after almost 3 years of negotiations, the consortium, named Project DEAL, can finally claim a success: This morning, it signed a deal with Wiley, an academic publisher headquartered in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Under the 3-year contract, scientists at more than 700 academic institutions will be able to access all of Wiley's academic journals back to 1997 and to publish open access in all of Wiley's journals. The annual fee will be based on the number of papers they publish in Wiley journals—about 10,000 in previous years, says one of the negotiators, physicist Gerard Meijer of the Fritz Haber Institute, a Max Planck Society institute here.
A precise formula for the fee has been agreed on but at Wiley's request will only be made public, along with other details in the contract, in 30 days, Meijer says. However, the total payment should be roughly what German institutes have been paying Wiley in subscription fees so far, Meijer says.
Related Stories
Over at Techdirt, Glyn Moody writes briefly about how to stop the large academic publishing houses from completing their attempts at gaining control over the entire publishing process from end-to-end.
Techdirt's coverage of open access -- the idea that the fruits of publicly-funded scholarship should be freely available to all -- shows that the results so far have been mixed. On the one hand, many journals have moved to an open access model. On the other, the overall subscription costs for academic institutions have not gone down, and neither have the excessive profit margins of academic publishers. Despite that success in fending off this attempt to re-invent the way academic work is disseminated, publishers want more. In particular, they want more money and more power. In an important new paper, a group of researchers warn that companies now aim to own the entire academic publishing stack: [...]
As it stands, universities stand for the salaries of the faculty members who research, write, and edit the journal articles at no cost to the publishers which then charge exorbitant prices for access to the results.
Journal Reference:
Björn Brembs, Philippe Huneman, Felix Schönbrodt, et al. Replacing academic journals, (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5526635)
Previously:
(2020) Open Access Journals Get A Boost From Librarians—Much To Elsevier's Dismay
(2019) University of California Boycotts Publishing Giant Elsevier Over Journal Costs and Open Access
(2019) German Institutions Reach Open Access Deal with Scientific Publisher Wiley
(2018) Elsevier's Demands are Unacceptable to Germany's Academic Community
(2017) List of "Predatory Publishers" Disappears
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday January 18 2019, @03:29AM (3 children)
You fifth-columinst Kraut bastards. We can only hope that Mutter Merkel will die by her words.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 18 2019, @04:38AM (1 child)
I thought you liked Hitler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @01:13PM
Merkel may very well be remembered by history as a reverse Hitler. Someone who had her own country invaded and destroyed.
Well done that woman. Killing an entire country and its culture is not easy. Multiculturalism for the lose!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 18 2019, @04:53AM
Is it Godwin''s (read: Godwin prime's) Law to invoke Merkel?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Ayn Anonymous on Friday January 18 2019, @11:46AM (4 children)
F this deal.
This publisher system has to die.
Support Sci-Hub & Library Genesis, the true solution.
http://sci-hub.tech/ [sci-hub.tech] & http://gen.lib.rus.ec/ [lib.rus.ec]
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday January 18 2019, @03:19PM (3 children)
That's like cursing HBO and Showtime, then proposing use of The Pirate Bay. While the system may not be great, proposing the use of a system that feeds off another, isn't going to help a whole lot. Assuming what actually care about is the content. Not the idea, that you could possibly have to pay someone for something.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 18 2019, @04:40PM (2 children)
What's wrong with the Pirate Bay ?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 18 2019, @04:46PM
It mines XMR and serves indecent advertisments.
(Score: 3, Funny) by driverless on Sunday January 20 2019, @06:05AM
It's going to bring about the immanentisation of the eschaton via the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Those fools have no idea what sort of forces they're playing with.