DEAL Consortium and Wiley Sign New 5-Year Open Access Agreement

“The DEAL Consortium and scholarly publisher Wiley today announced the signing of a new five-year agreement which will allow scientists from German academic institutions to publish their research open access (OA) within Wiley’s portfolio of scientific journals. Instituted by the Alliance of German Science Organizations the DEAL Consortium is open to more than 900 mostly publicly funded academic institutions in Germany. Signed by Wiley and MPDL Services gGmbH as the DEAL Operating Entity, the new agreement will begin in January 2024, offering further support for the needs of the scholarly community and accelerate the open access transformation.

The new agreement continues the successful collaboration that started in 2019 and through which by now over 38,000 articles have been published open access. It will provide authors at participating German institutions with open access publishing options across Wiley’s portfolio alongside read access to all Wiley journal content. The new agreement will also:

Support institutions in the transition to OA, honoring the immense value learned societies bring to the scholarly community.
Enhance infrastructure, including robust workflows to support authors, librarians and open access administrators.
Support participating institutions with bespoke training and continuing collaboration with the Wiley DEAL Advisory Board to monitor success….”

Transforming research for an Open Science world | Research Information

“At the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), we believe that trusted research should be discoverable, open, and shareable as quickly as possible to help solve the global challenges that matter. That’s why we’ve been providing support to scientists and engineers at each step of their research journey for over 150 years.

Our Research Solutions are helping to transform research for an Open Science world….

With this in mind, we established a partnership with Wiley in 2020 and embraced the opportunity to transition our entire journals portfolio to Gold Open Access. Researchers can also get help towards the cost of publishing in our journals with APC discounts for IET members and support through Wiley’s Transformational Agreements and Research4Life.,,,:

Open access to journal articles of the American Society of Criminology: A little study to illustrate concepts and costs · CrimRxiv

There can be 100% open access (OA) to criminology articles. It’d increase criminology’s scientificity and impact. Anything less is a social injustice. To advance open criminology, the American Society of Criminology’s (ASC) Scientific Integrity Committee hosted the Green Open Access Webinar. The advertisement makes a bold proclamation: “ALL journal articles can be made open access for FREE… yes, 100% FREE.” Is the proclamation true? Now? Legally? How? Who has the power? I answer these questions in this Pub. I conclude with thoughts on how to allocate scarce resources for the greatest good. ROI matters because we can’t support everything; we need to choose. Money spent on gold OA could have better ROI if invested in the systematic provision of green OA. Instead of pay publishers APCs, pay the money directly to authors, editors, learned-societies, and others who can multiply the quantity and quality of OA by emphasizing what’s green over gold. 

If you’d like to disagree with me, correct me, or whatever, please do! Among other ways, you can “Post a discussion” at the Pub’s end or in-line. You’re also welcome to engage me on Twitter/X at @SJacques83. (I don’t have a Mastadon or Bluesky account yet, sorry; but it’s on my to-do list.)

Wiley and German DEAL Consortium to Sign New 5-Year Agreement | John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

“Wiley (NYSE: WLY) today announced its intent to enter a new five-year agreement with the DEAL Consortium, a countrywide consortium representative of more than 1,000 academic institutions in Germany, commencing January 2024. Wiley and DEAL are creating a blueprint for the next phase of open access publishing to better meet the evolving needs of the scholarly community.

Wiley was the first publisher to sign an agreement with DEAL, which makes this partnership the most robust and long-lasting in Germany. Their new agreement will continue to provide authors at German institutions with open access publishing options across Wiley’s portfolio. This includes read access to all Wiley journal content….”

The role of gender and coauthors in academic publication behavior – ScienceDirect

Abstract:  This paper contributes to the literature on differences in publication behavior of male and female scientists by examining two natural experiments in Germany that exogenously varied the attractiveness of journals. As a result of transformative open access publication agreements, journals published by Springer Nature and Wiley became more attractive as outlets for authors in Germany, while Elsevier journals lost some of their attractiveness within Germany due to substantial cancellations by university libraries. Studying 243,375 published articles in economics between 2015 and 2022, our findings suggests that men tend to seek reputation, while women favor visibility through open access, at least at the margin. While authorship in teams can dilute these behavioral patterns, female economists publish more single-authored papers. Overall female researchers appear to contribute more to the public good of open science, while their male colleagues focus on private reputation. These findings may offer an additional explanatory channel for the academic gender gap.

Wiley journal board resigns en masse after monthlong strike

“At least two-thirds of the editorial board of Wiley’s Journal of Biogeography has resigned, citing the publisher’s push toward “exorbitant” open-access fees and what they claimed was a policy to steer rejected manuscripts to other titles.

Former editor in chief Mike Dawson announced his resignation in June, and 64 of his associate editors have been refusing to handle new manuscripts since then, a move that is part of an increasing trend of journal editorial boards deciding to take action en masse.

The editors who resigned objected to the publisher flipping the journal to open access, having to deal with an increase in papers and the automatic referral of rejected manuscripts to other Wiley journals.”

Wiley journal editors resign en masse, fired chief editor speaks – Retraction Watch

“Two-thirds of the associate editors of the Journal of Biogeography, a Wiley title, have resigned in a dispute with the publisher, and more resignations are likely, according to those involved. 

Most of the resignations, reported first by Times Higher Education, were effective immediately, but a portion of the associate editors set August 28 as their effective date in hopes Wiley may negotiate with them about their concerns….

The Journal of Biogeography is not fully open access, but charges APCs of $4,800 for authors who wish to make their articles freely available.

Such fees are “excessive,” and “not affordable,” said Krystal Tolley, one of the associate editors who put in her resignation for the end of the month. Tolley is based in South Africa, and said she and other researchers in the Global South “just don’t have those kinds of funds.” 

Wiley and other major publishers often waive fees for authors in low-income countries, and “transformative agreements” in which funding agencies or universities pay publication fees rather than authors….”

Another Wiley journal loses editorial board | Times Higher Education (THE)

“At least two-thirds of the editorial board of Wiley’s Journal of Biogeography have resigned, citing the publisher’s push towards “exorbitant” open access fees and what they claimed was a policy to steer rejected manuscripts to other titles.

Former editor-in-chief Mike Dawson announced his resignation in June and 64 of his associate editors have been refusing to handle new manuscripts since then, part of an increasing trend of journal editorial boards deciding to take action en masse.

They objected to the publisher flipping the journal to open access, having to deal with an increase in papers and the automatic referral of rejected manuscripts to other Wiley journals….”

An editor resigned in protest. Now, Wiley is firing him four months earlier than he planned to leave. – Retraction Watch

“The publisher Wiley has fired the chief editor of the Journal of Biogeography after he resigned over conflicts with the company.  

Michael Dawson, a professor at the University of California, Merced, submitted his resignation on June 21, tweeting that he made the decision “because journal management declined to explore productive solutions to a suite of challenges facing the journal.”…

In an accompanying blog post, Dawson listed several concerns from his resignation letter, including proposed growth targets for the journal, equity issues in adopting an open access model in which authors pay fees to publish their work, and compensation for the editors. He tweeted that the journal’s December issue would be his last….”

Shifts to open access with high article processing charges hinder research equity and careers

“We, as Associate Editors (AEs) for the Journal of Biogeography, have serious concerns about the widespread shifts by John Wiley & Sons Ltd (Wiley) and other academic publishers to full Open Access (OA), which appears to be imminent for journals in the Wiley portfolio (Rieseberg et al., 2023) and has been discussed as a possibility for the Journal of Biogeography itself. We commend the philosophy of OA—to make research freely available online, but for many journals that shift to full OA, article publication is accompanied by expensive article processing charges (APCs) payable by the authors (see Laakso et al., 2011; Tennant et al., 2016). This creates a financial burden that falls heaviest on early career scientists and scientists from low- to middle-income countries, erecting barriers to equity in publishing. The typical APC fees for OA range from 2000 to 3500 USD but can even surpass 11,000 USD, while the Journal of Biogeography APC is currently 4800 USD per article. A shift from subscription-based to full OA-based business models with APCs also clearly shifts the economic incentives for journals away from quality and toward quantity. High-throughput and high-output publishing models in academia severely risk lowering research standards and jeopardise the reputation of journals that adopt this practice.

As a way of signalling the depth of our concerns, 85% of the AEs of the Journal of Biogeography recently carried out a work stoppage, during which we refused to handle any new manuscript submissions. We view this as a temporary measure, as a way of encouraging further dialogue between Wiley, the publisher of the Journal of Biogeography, and the chief editorial team charged with ensuring journal quality….

Wiley, the owner and publisher of the Journal of Biogeography, has had a reported annual revenue in recent years of over 2 billion USD per annum with a gross profit margin averaging nearly 70%….”

BishopBlog: Is Hindawi “well-positioned for revitalization?”

“Over the past year, special issues of dozens of Hindawi journals have been exposed as being systematically manipulated, resulting in the delisting of more than 20 Hindawi journals from major journal databases, as well as the retraction of more than 2,700 papers by the publisher. This “unexpected event” at Hindawi also led to a slump in profits for the parent company, John Wiley & Sons. However, in a recent statement, the president, CEO & director of Wiley, Brian Napack, stated that Hindawi was now ready for revitalization and reinstatement of the special issue program. In my opinion, Wiley has not dealt adequately with the integrity issues that led to the problem, but appears focused on growth  through the medium of special issues. This raises questions as to whether Hindawi’s operation is sustainable in the long term. …”

#BetterPublishing @jbiogeography: I – Journal of Biogeography

“In response to the #Workstoppage by #AssociateEditors of @jbiogeography, the journal’s management at Wiley rapidly issued a largely dismissive reply that resulted in the resignation of deputy editor-in-chief Ceridwen Fraser. We invited Wiley to provide a revised response, but received none. As a consequence, the editorial board has compiled our concerns and called for a dozen issues to be addressed, as described in our answer to Wiley, below….”

Journal editors resign, strike in dispute with Wiley over ‘business model that maximises profit’ | Retraction Watch

The editor in chief of a Wiley journal has resigned, saying the publisher recently has “seemed to emphasize cost-cutting and margins over good editorial practice.” 

Most of the journal’s associate editors are in the midst of a work stoppage protesting the same issues. After Wiley responded to the associate editors in a way they found “troubling,” the editors replied with a list of 12 demands, and a deputy editor in chief tendered her resignation.

[…]

 

Read your open access publishing agreements, or: how you might accidentally give Elsevier or Wiley the exclusive right to profit from your OA article | Authors Alliance

“For open access publications, I’ve unfortunately found this attitude to be especially prevalent because authors tend to think that by publishing on an OA basis, the only contract terms that really matter are those of the Creative Commons license they choose for their article.

That can be a dangerous strategy.  Elsevier and Wiley OA publishing agreements, which have long-standing issues along these lines as noted here, here, here, and here, highlight the problem really well.

Those publishing agreements do provide what many authors want in OA publishing–free online access and broad reuse rights to users. But, if authors select the wrong option, they are also giving away their own residual rights while granting Elsevier or Wiley the exclusive right to commercially exploit their work. That includes the right for those publishers to exclude the author herself from making or authorizing even the most basic of commercial uses, such as posting the article to a for-profit repository like Researchgate or even SSRN. This is not a result I think most authors intend, but it’s hard to spot the problem unless you read these publication agreements carefully….”