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By Kai Kupferschmidt
Project Deal, a consortium of German libraries, universities and research institutes, has unveiled an unprecedented agreement with a major magazine publisher, Wiley, who is closely monitoring proponents of open access to scientific articles. .
The pact, signed last month but released this week, was hailed as the first national agreement of its kind in a major research country. (Only institutions in the United States, China and the United Kingdom publish more articles.) Researchers working in more than 700 Project Deal institutions have access to more than 1,500 journals published by Wiley, based at Hoboken, New Jersey. as an archive of the editor. It also allows researchers to make the articles they publish with Wiley free of charge at no extra charge.
This trade agreement, known as "publish and read," was touted as a way to promote open access publishing. But until this week, a key part of the Wiley agreement – how much would it cost – was secretive.
Now the numbers are out. Germany will pay 2750 euros to Wiley for each article published in one of the publisher's hybrid newspapers, containing both paid and free articles. The contract provides that researchers will publish approximately 9,500 such articles annually, at a cost of 26 million euros. In addition, researchers will benefit from a 20% discount on the publication price in Wiley journals already in open access.
The agreement is an important step towards freer access to the scientific publication, but the per-item fee of € 2,750 seems high, said Leo Waaijers, an open access advocate and retired librarian at Delft University of Technology. Netherlands. The Dutch researchers are paying Wiley only 1,600 euros per article under a similar agreement reached in the Netherlands, he noted. "It's the same process, the same product, so why the price difference?", He says.
Gerard Meijer, physicist at the Fritz Haber Institute, member of the Max Planck Society in Berlin, and one of the Project Deal negotiators, explains that the agreement reached between Germany and Wiley was "more or less neutral in terms of budget". . The goal was to keep German payments to Wiley in 2019, virtually identical to those of 2018, he said. And as a larger country with more institutions, Germany was paying more subscription fees to Wiley than in the Netherlands. This is reflected in higher article publishing costs. But the difference is that articles from Project Deal researchers will now be available for free worldwide. In addition, some institutions had access to journals that they did not have access to before.
One of the benefits of this agreement is that German researchers will no longer pay twice for Wiley's hybrid journals – once for a subscription, and once again if they want to create a free paper format – says Lidia Borrell-Damian of the European Association of Universities in Brussels. "Germany seems protected against double deductions … and that's important," she says.
Waaijers hopes German institutions will be able to negotiate lower open publishing fees. But he considers that the current contract, lasting 3 years, is a good first step. "I think it's not possible for Germany to say to Wiley at the moment:" We want a contract of 1,600 [euros] by article, "he says. "This would be a huge financial setback for Wiley, and they are absolutely not ready to take that step."
The fact that the details of the German contract became public is also important, said Borrell-Damian. "The contracts should be public because it is public money spent," she says. And if other countries sign similar agreements and the details become public, then "the whole game of price comparison can begin," says Waaijers. And that, say proponents of open access, could push for even lower publication costs.
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