The role of open access strengthened in FinELib negotiations

Abstract

In early 2019, researchers, teachers and students at Finnish universities lose access to hundreds of scientific publications as the negotiations between the national FinELib library consortium and scientific publisher Taylor & Francis ended without result. Towards the end of the year, the situation was getting better with T&F – and an agreement was also reached with Wiley and SAGE. At the heart of negotiations and disputes in Finland and elsewhere in Europe is, besides money, open access publishing. Universities's goal is an agreement that covers, without any additional charge, authors’ fees (article processing charges, APCs) for open access publishing. These so called transformative agreements represent the shift from subscription fees to publishing fees, and the aim is to make subscriptions cheaper in the long run. Criticism has also been raised against the transformative agreements, because of the costly transition period and the cost burden of research-intensive universities. (Juuso Ala-Kyyny)

• Background article about the FinELib negotiations' goals (in Finnish)

Other articles, reports and news about transformative agreements in 2019:

• During problematic negotiations, open access resources provide Alternative Access to articles
• The report provides information on the costs, publication volumes and timelines of Big Deal contracts: Decrypting the Big Deal landscape
• Consequences of Sweden Cancelling Elsevier (presentation of the results of the report)
• Elsevier cut the University of California’s access to its journals in January 2019 – negotiation goals are similar with European universities
• German Projekt DEAL and Springer reach understanding on "world´s largest transformative Open Access agreement" in August 2019
• Dutch research institutions and Elsevier reach framework agreement in December 2019