No Deal: German Universities Prepare For Cut-Off From Elsevier Journals

16/12/2016 by Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch 9 Comments

After licensing negotiations between German university libraries and Elsevier failed at the beginning of the month, over 60 university libraries in Germany are preparing to be cut off from hundreds of journals of the British-Dutch publisher, after a standoff over pricing and access.

The university libraries organised in the DEAL initiative rejected an offer made by Elsevier earlier this month for a first nationwide licence, because of an aggressive pricing and flaws in the access models.

The offer made by Elsevier to DEAL would “not comply with the principles of open access,” the librarians of the University of Goettingen wrote in a message to their users, and “despite its current profit margin of 40 percent, the publisher is still intent on pursuing even higher price increases.”

With the stop of the negotiations access to future journal editions be cut off on 1 January, when current licenses are expiring. But there will also be no access to archived editions of journals licensed under “individual e-packages for the economic sciences in particular,” according to the message.

For years, university libraries have grappled with the problem that they were unable to afford the journal packages that were filled for free from their scientists in the first place. Librarians after the cut-off will assist those needing access via alternative channels, like interlibrary loans, the message from Goettingen reads.

The fight between universities and the big publishing houses has been going on for some time, with a development similar to the DEAL initiative in Germany on the way by FinELIB in Finland. Over 16,000 scientists followed the call of renowned mathematician Tim Gowers in 2012 not to further publish or peer-review for Elsevier.

But the effect has obviously made no big impression on the publisher so far and a recent study showed that 38 percent of the signatories did not keep up with the commitment made. Who will win in the standoff between universities and publishers after January remains to be seen.

Meanwhile British scientists filed a complaint over potential market abuse by Elsevier with the British Competition and Market Authority.

Monika Ermert may be reached at info@ip-watch.ch.

"No Deal: German Universities Prepare For Cut-Off From Elsevier Journals" by Intellectual Property Watch is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Comments

steelgraham says

17/12/2016 at 11:54 am

Elsevier are from the Netherlands, not Britain.

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Rachel Schmidt says

18/12/2016 at 3:39 pm

I support Germany’s action. I know Germany’s decision is a difficult one to make, but big publishing houses have to realize they cannot hold information hostage. Until that happens, actions like Germany’s have to be supported, joined, and applauded!! Researchers have to take the plunge away from publishing with big publishing houses and hope that the research world will respect their decision. As difficult as this decision is, they must realize they will be the losers if they continue to march to the drumbeat of big publishing. I don’t minimize this decision – very difficult to make, and I don’t doubt the retribution might be great from big publishing. But, that is when the remainder of the world must join forces to support and fight on their behalf. The current system is unfair to everyone except for the publisher.

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William New says

19/12/2016 at 5:09 pm

Thank you steelgraham. Our understanding is that Elsevier is the Dutch multinational, and subsidiary of British-Dutch RELX Group (majority British). We will change it in the story to British-Dutch. – the Editor

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ebev says

26/12/2016 at 3:49 pm

Supply and Demand. It’s always possible for a business to price itself right out of existence. With a profit margin of 40%, it seems that they have options; but are they too foolish to recognize their danger?

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louis lapidaire says

04/01/2017 at 2:10 am

try http://www.oalibrary.org brought to you by united academics (united-academics.org)

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