Courtesy of
The Scientist -
'
Major German Universities Cancel Elsevier Contracts
These
institutions join around 60 others that hope to put increasing pressure on the
publishing giant in ongoing negotiations for a new nationwide licensing
agreement.
By Diana
Kwon | July 17, 2017
SATALINO
I n Germany,
the fight for open access and favorable pricing for journals is getting heated.
At the end of last month (June 30), four major academic institutions in
Berlin announced that they would not renew their
subscriptions with the Dutch publishing giant Elsevier once they end this
December. Then on July 7, nine universities in Baden-Württemberg, another large
German state, also declared their
intention to cancel their contracts with the publisher at the end of 2017.
These
institutions join around 60 others across the country that allowed their
contracts to expire last year.
The decision
to cancel subscriptions was made in order to put pressure on Elsevier during
ongoing negotiations. “Nobody wants Elsevier to starve—they should be paid
fairly for their good service,” says Ursula Flitner, the head of the medical library at
Charité–Berlin University of Medicine. “The problem is, we no longer see what
their good service is.”
Charité–Berlin
University of Medicine is joined by Humboldt University of Berlin, Free
University of Berlin, and Technical University of Berlin in letting its
Elsevier subscriptions lapse.
“The general
issue is that large parts of the research done is publicly funded, the type
setting and quality control [peer review] is done by people who are paid by the
public, [and] the purchase of the journals is also paid by the public,”
says Christian Thomsen, the president of the Technical
University of Berlin. “So it’s a bit too much payment.”
Project DEAL,
an alliance of German institutions led by the Hochschulrektorenkonferenz
(German Rectors’ Conference), has been working to establish a new nationwide
licensing agreement with three major scientific publishers, Elsevier, Springer
Nature, and Wiley, since 2016. “The ‘big three’ cover up to 50 to 60 percent of
many library budgets in Germany,” says Andreas Degkwitz, the director of the library at Humboldt
University, which is among those represented by DEAL. “Elsevier is the biggest
of these.”
Sources
would not disclose the costs of subscriptions because their contracts are
confidential. But according to Degkwitz, in general, the price of journal
subscriptions across all publishers has been increasing on an average of about
5 percent per year.
The
universities that cancelled their contracts are supporting DEAL’s three key
demands: fair pricing based on the number of publications, open access to all
publications by scientists at German institutions, and permanent access to
Elsevier’s electronic journals for scientific bodies represented by the DEAL
project. If these objectives are met, payments would no longer be made for
journal subscriptions—instead, scientific institutions and funders would pay a
certain sum per published article, which would immediately become openly
available, Flitner explains.
“I don’t see
an immediate end [to the negotiations with Elsevier],” Degkwitz adds. “With
Springer and Wiley we might have a contract in the beginning or in the first
months of 2018, and so far the cancellations of those subscriptions have not
been discussed.” He also points out that Springer has already agreed to
implement the “publish and read model,” which combines reading and publishing
into one combined fee, with some European institutions.
When asked
for comment, Elsevier pointed to a statement it released in June and would not provide
further details. “Researchers should also know that Elsevier is working
diligently to find a mutually acceptable solution with the
Hochschulrektorenkonferenz (HRK) and to put a new agreement in place this year,
ensuring uninterrupted access,” the company writes in the release. “Elsevier
agrees with all of HRK’s basic requests for a national license and open access,
and this is reflected in the numerous constructive proposals that we have
submitted to HRK.” However, what this means with respect to DEAL’s three
objectives remains unclear.
The DEAL
project also declined The Scientist’s request for comment. ’’
Africa Center for Clin Gov Research &
Patient Safety
@ HRI West Africa
Group - HRI WA
Consultants in
Clinical Governance Implementation
Publisher: Health and
Medical Journals
8 Amaku Street Housing
Estate, Calabar
Cross River State, Nigeria
Cross River State, Nigeria
Phone No. +234 (0) 8063600642
No comments:
Post a comment