Successful deal with science publisher

DEAL contract signed with Wiley

Jülich, 15 January 2019 – For almost two years now, German research organisations have been negotiating nationwide licensing agreements for the entire portfolio of electronic journals with the major academic publishers Elsevier, Wiley and SpringerNature under the umbrella of Projekt DEAL. In the future, scientific articles are to be published as open access. A first contract has now been successfully concluded.

Open access would allow unrestricted and free reading of scientific articles and improve access to scientific literature for science on a broad and sustainable basis. Only the publication would incur one-time costs.

Last year, negotiations stalled at first. In the course of the conflicts between the German science organisations and the scientific publisher Elsevier, scientists started to resign as editors and members of the editorial and advisory boards for the publisher’s journals.

Wiley und Projekt DEAL unterzeichnen Einigung
Bei der Vertragsunterzeichnung: Dr. Guido Herrmann, Managing Director Wiley-VCH, und Dr. Frank Sander, Managing Director Max Planck Digital Library Services
dpa, Tanja Marotzke

However, a first good “deal” for the German academic landscape has now been made. On 15 January 2019, a contract was signed with Wiley Publishing for a nationwide Publish&Read model. The agreement has a term of three years.

The central objectives of DEAL were achieved with the conclusion of the contract: access to all content, publishing in open access, and a fair pricing model that makes it possible to make research results affordably accessible in the long term.

For Forschungszentrum Jülich, the successful conclusion of the contract means, among other things, that the Central Library will in future be able to access ten times as many Wiley journals as before. In addition, all publications in subscription journals can be published open access with a submitting corresponding author from Forschungszentrum Jülich at no additional cost.

This first contract with Wiley provides momentum for further DEAL negotiations with the other two publishers SpringerNature and Elsevier as well as for similar initiatives abroad.

Dr. Mittermaier schaut im Lesesaal der Zentralbibliothek durch eine zusammengerollte Publikation.
Dr. Bernhard Mittermaier, Leiter der Zentralbibliothek des Forschungszentrums Jülich
Forschungszentrum Jülich / Ralf-Uwe Limbach

The project was commissioned by the Alliance of German Science Organisations. In order to implement the project, the Alliance has set up a DEAL project group with relevant experts from universities and non-university institutions as well as a negotiation team. Dr. Bernhard Mittermaier, Head of the Central Library of Forschungszentrum Jülich, is a member of both groups.

The most important items from the contract:

  • Permanent access to Wiley’s entire portfolio of electronic journals (“perpetual access”), which currently amounts to around 1,700 titles.
  • Permanent archive rights to the entire journal portfolio back to the year 1997.
  • Publication of articles in open access for all submitting corresponding authors from participating institutions in the journals of Wiley (both in the original open access journals and in the subscription titles), usually under a CC-BY license.
  • Agreement on a fair and sustainable cost model based on a so-called Publish&Read fee (short: PAR fee), which on the one hand covers the publication of the above-mentioned articles (“publish”) in open access and on the other hand grants the access to read the entire portfolio of subscription journals (“read”). The total price for the nationwide DEAL contract with regard to publishing and reading in the subscription magazines is calculated by multiplying the number of articles published by submitting corresponding authors of the generally eligible institutions by the PAR fee amounting to € 2,750. There are no additional costs for reading access (“reading fee”), with the exception of a one-off payment for the retrospective closing of the gap in the archive (affiliation to the national licences until 1997).
  • For publishing in gold open access journals, a discount of 20% on the APC (article processing charges) list prices will be granted.
  • All academic institutions in Germany that are also entitled to participate in the alliance licences and national licenses are eligible to participate (including: universities, universities of applied sciences, research institutions, state and regional libraries). (in German)

Further information:

Projekt-Deal

FAQ Wiley and DEAL(in German)

Jülich Blogs(in German)

Contact:

Dr. Bernhard Mittermaier
Head of the Central Library of Forschungszentrum Jülich
E-Mail: b.mittermaier@fz-juelich.de
Tel.: +49 2461 61-5368

Press contact:

Annette Stettien
Corporate Communications
E-Mail: a.stettien@fz-juelich.de
Tel.: +49 2461 61-2388

Last Modified: 22.05.2022