No Evilsevier DEAL!

“No matter how well-intended (and we all know to which place the road leads that is paved with good intentions!), transformative agreements (such as DEAL in Germany) are generally the wrong tool at the wrong time for making publicly funded science accessible to the public. If you count public statements, the picture of a rare academic consensus emerges: the DEAL-incompatible proposals and criteria from the Council of EU Science Ministers were enthusiastically welcomed by a wide range of scientific organizations. This was not surprising as these conclusions originated from within the scholarly community and build on existing solutions within scholarly institutions. More surprising is the positive feedback coming from the smaller publishers. They welcome these modern concepts from the scientific community that have found their way into the EU decisions, because they finally give them an opportunity to compete with the larger publishers. In short, the only ones still considering DEAL to be up to the task are DEAL themselves and the big publishers; all other relevant actors who have made public statements so far, all reject DEAL.

If DEAL needs to be rejected in general, the Elsevier DEAL needs to be rejected with particular fervor. In addition to the reasons mentioned above, the price negotiated by DEAL with Elsevier is many times more expensive than the market-based solutions favored by all other stakeholders. These spiraling costs will eventually eat into the budget also of non-DEAL fields, which have already taken massive hits by the serials crisis. Elsevier is also part of the surveillance corporation RELX and the clauses in the contract that are intended to protect users from data abuse are useless, because they are neither policed nor enforced. This blank check issued to Elsevier makes participating institutions accomplices in the corporation’s eventual privacy violations. Especially in times of globally growing autocratic tendencies, there should be no question that German universities ought not to denigrate themselves to data suppliers for international intelligence services and law enforcement agencies – all important RELX customers….”

Home – Open Negotiation Education for Academic Libraries (ONEAL) – LibGuides at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis

“The Open Negotiation Education for Academic Libraries (ONEAL) project is a collaboration between Indiana University Purdue University – Indianapolis, Grand Valley State University, and Belmont University to develop curricula and open educational resources to support teaching negotiation education within academic libraries and in Master of Library Science (MLS/MLIS) programs. These educational resources will teach negotiation theory and strategy using academic library context of negotiating third-party content provider agreements.  The curriculum developed will raise the capacity and skill of academic librarians to plan and execute negotiations for electronic resources with third party vendors moving libraries toward sustainability as well as improving access to resources for patrons. While targeted toward academic libraries licensing resources for research, teaching, and learning, the materials created also have the potential to benefit all library sectors (academic, public, school, and special) at the national and potentially global levels. Library science programs will have access to the OER, addressing an issue of strategic importance around maintaining collections.”

Costs of scientific journals have reached unsustainable level – The future of subscriptions in jeopardy – FinELib

“Publishers are demanding increasingly higher fees for reading scientific journals and open access publishing, even though the scientific community can’t sustain even the current costs. The expenses have risen to a level that doesn’t correspond to the benefits received from the services….

The consortium is prepared that if the goals are not achieved, it’s possible that not all current scientific journal agreements can be continued….”

 

All Things Must Pass | Research Information

“Andrew Barker and Elaine Sykes reflect on Lancaster University’s shift to an open research culture

We begin this opinion piece with a statement of confidence, ambition and intent: this is the best and most exciting time to be a librarian; universities are progressing towards a new research culture, a culture that puts openness and equity at its centre – and librarians are using our knowledge, skills, relationships and our ambitions to be at the centre of that progressive shift. That shift includes, but is not limited to, the future of scholarly outputs, data, digital scholarship and citizen science engagement opportunities. This piece will outline thoughts from Lancaster University on what we are going to do to support the move to an open research culture, but it also make it clear that the status quo has to change, and we are explicit that now is the time to accept that change and for the sector to work together on a range of activities that cut across the different parts of our sector….”

No Deal: German Researchers’ Publishing and Citing Behaviours after Big Deal Negotiations with Elsevier | Quantitative Science Studies | MIT Press

Abstract:  In 2014, a union of German research organisations established Projekt DEAL, a national-level project to negotiate licensing agreements with large scientific publishers. Negotiations between DEAL and Elsevier began in 2016, and broke down without a successful agreement in 2018; in this time, around 200 German research institutions cancelled their license agreements with Elsevier, leading Elsevier to restrict journal access at those institutions. We investigated the effect on researchers’ publishing and citing behaviours from a bibliometric perspective, using a dataset of ?400,000 articles published by researchers at DEAL institutions between 2012–2020. We further investigated these effects with respect to the timing of contract cancellations, research disciplines, collaboration patterns, and article open-access status. We find evidence for a decrease in Elsevier’s market share of articles from DEAL institutions, with the largest year-on-year market share decreases occuring from 2018 to 2020 following the implementation of access restrictions. We also observe year-on-year decreases in the proportion of citations, although the decrease is smaller. We conclude that negotiations with Elsevier and access restrictions have led to some reduced willingness to publish in Elsevier journals, but that researchers are not strongly affected in their ability to cite Elsevier articles, implying that researchers use other methods to access scientific literature.

 

A free toolkit to foster open access agreements – Insights

Abstract:  In November 2021, with the support of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) and cOAlition S, four ‘task and finish’ working groups were established. The authors facilitated and supported these groups. Each group was responsible for producing tools that will enable library consortia and small independent publishers to negotiate transformative agreements, which is to say, agreements that will enable the publisher to fully transition to open access. The first task and finish group developed shared principles for transformative agreements. The second developed a data template to enable smaller independent publishers to reach agreements with library consortia and libraries, while the third developed example licence agreements. These groups recognized that the implementation of a transformative agreement crosses a complex ecosystem of technology, processes, policies, automated functions and manual functions that relate to contract management, article submission and peer review, content hosting and dissemination as well as financial management. For this reason, a fourth group produced a workflow framework that describes the process in all its phases. The members of these four groups were volunteers from stakeholder communities including libraries, library consortia, smaller independent publishers and intermediaries. This article explains why these tools are needed and the process behind their creation. The authors have combined these tools into a freely available toolkit, available under a CC BY licence.

 

DEAL ist ein Problem – Gespräch mit Thomas Stäcker über die Folgen der Digitalisierung für Bibliotheken (3) – Aus der Forschungs­bibliothek Krekelborn

From Google’s English:  

“Isn’t it obvious that the DEAL project wants to promote open access, but that this good intention is bought at a high price and the oligopoly structures in the science market are being consolidated?

I agree with you there. However, many colleagues in the library world see things differently and see DEAL as a success. After a few years of observation, however, I have to confirm the diagnosis that expectations in DEAL as a game changer in terms of the publication system are being disappointed. We don’t save any money. Promises of reallocating funds are unrealistic. I consider the still existing restriction to a few players to be fatal, since existing oligopolies are being further entrenched. The really good thing about DEAL is that you negotiate on a national level in a consortium. It is also very important that the German Rectors’ Conference organizes this process, because science itself and not just the libraries are involved.So I think a lot of DEAL as a structure, but I don’t think that DEAL is still addressing the right issues at the moment. Why can’t DEAL as a consortium also serve, for example, to establish Diamond Open Access structures? You could get the funding for this, for example from the DFG….”

Indispensable or unnecessary?: a data-driven appraisal of post-cancellation access rights – Insights

Abstract:  When breaking out of ‘big deals’, some libraries and consortia have found that they can save money by negotiating away post-cancellation access (PCA) to subscribed resources after the subscription concludes. Using subscription data regarding major publisher contracts at several US research libraries, this article reviews options around PCA for libraries and presents a model for assigning a value to PCA content when negotiating a renewal contract.

 

Indispensable or unnecessary?: a data-driven appraisal of post-cancellation access rights – Insights

Abstract:  When breaking out of ‘big deals’, some libraries and consortia have found that they can save money by negotiating away post-cancellation access (PCA) to subscribed resources after the subscription concludes. Using subscription data regarding major publisher contracts at several US research libraries, this article reviews options around PCA for libraries and presents a model for assigning a value to PCA content when negotiating a renewal contract.

 

Indispensable or unnecessary?: a data-driven appraisal of post-cancellation access rights – Insights

Abstract:  When breaking out of ‘big deals’, some libraries and consortia have found that they can save money by negotiating away post-cancellation access (PCA) to subscribed resources after the subscription concludes. Using subscription data regarding major publisher contracts at several US research libraries, this article reviews options around PCA for libraries and presents a model for assigning a value to PCA content when negotiating a renewal contract.

 

Indispensable or unnecessary?: a data-driven appraisal of post-cancellation access rights – Insights

Abstract:  When breaking out of ‘big deals’, some libraries and consortia have found that they can save money by negotiating away post-cancellation access (PCA) to subscribed resources after the subscription concludes. Using subscription data regarding major publisher contracts at several US research libraries, this article reviews options around PCA for libraries and presents a model for assigning a value to PCA content when negotiating a renewal contract.

 

Indispensable or unnecessary?: a data-driven appraisal of post-cancellation access rights – Insights

Abstract:  When breaking out of ‘big deals’, some libraries and consortia have found that they can save money by negotiating away post-cancellation access (PCA) to subscribed resources after the subscription concludes. Using subscription data regarding major publisher contracts at several US research libraries, this article reviews options around PCA for libraries and presents a model for assigning a value to PCA content when negotiating a renewal contract.

 

Indispensable or unnecessary?: a data-driven appraisal of post-cancellation access rights – Insights

Abstract:  When breaking out of ‘big deals’, some libraries and consortia have found that they can save money by negotiating away post-cancellation access (PCA) to subscribed resources after the subscription concludes. Using subscription data regarding major publisher contracts at several US research libraries, this article reviews options around PCA for libraries and presents a model for assigning a value to PCA content when negotiating a renewal contract.

 

Indispensable or unnecessary?: a data-driven appraisal of post-cancellation access rights – Insights

Abstract:  When breaking out of ‘big deals’, some libraries and consortia have found that they can save money by negotiating away post-cancellation access (PCA) to subscribed resources after the subscription concludes. Using subscription data regarding major publisher contracts at several US research libraries, this article reviews options around PCA for libraries and presents a model for assigning a value to PCA content when negotiating a renewal contract.

 

N8 statement of support for the sector’s rejection of the Springer Nature proposal – N8 Research Partnership

“The N8 universities are fully committed to fostering open research in an equitable and financially sustainable way. We support the approach being taken by the UK’s Springer Negotiation Team and the recommendation to reject the most recent proposal from Springer on the basis it does not yet fully meet the core objectives of the negotiations.

We welcome the progress made so far and hope both parties can continue to work together to achieve an agreement which meets the core negotiation objectives and provides support for a sector-wide transition to open access….”