Kategoria: News in English

Additional time for negotiations with Wiley

5.4.2019

FinELib continues negotiations with Wiley on reaching a deal that includes open access components. The aim of FinELib is to guarantee researchers and students the possibility of publishing open access without additional fees and having access to Wiley’s journals.

The 2018 agreement between FinELib and Wiley will be extended until the end of 2019 under current terms and journal contents. This affords additional time for the negotiations to reach an agreement advancing open access.

FinELib aims to move from traditional subscription models to open access publishing quickly and in a financially sustainable way. This OA2020 goal is shared by over 140 organisations and coalitions all over the world; by organisations who are also negotiating about open access with different publishers.

Agreement between RSC and FinELib promotes open access in chemistry

25.2.2019

FinELib and Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) have made a new RSC Read & Publish -agreement for 2019. This agreement gives researchers and students access to read 40 journals published by RSC, as well as the possibility to publish their article open access in RSC hybrid journals without additional payments.

“RSC’s journals are an important publication channel for us, and we’re pleased that with this agreement all our articles will be published open access. This is a step towards open access to science and supports Aalto’s aims for open science”, says Mari Aaltonen, Head of Library Resources at the Aalto University Research and Innovation Services.

FinELib’s RSC Read & Publish agreement covers 10 consortium members, who yearly have published approximately 70 articles in total in RSC journals. With the new agreement, already five articles have been published open access in January. The agreement term is 1.1.2019 - 31.12.2019.

More information about open publishing in RSC journals

FinELib’s negotiations with Wiley continue

21.2.2019

The FinELib consortium and Wiley are negotiating for an agreement, which would grant researchers and students the right to read the journals published by Wiley, as well as the possibility to publish their articles open access in Wiley journals without additional payments.

The previous agreement between FinELib and Wiley came to an end on December 31, 2018. For now, the prolonged negotiations haven’t yet affected the daily life of researchers and students, since Wiley has kept access to their journals open for the subscribers of the previous agreement.

The negotiating parties are still looking for a solution which would be acceptable for both Wiley and the members of FinELib consortium.

Similar negotiations with another scholarly publisher, Taylor & Francis, ended in January. The FinELib consortium doesn’t have an agreement with Taylor & Francis at the moment.

Questions and answers about FinELib’s negotiations

8.2.2019

FinELib has published the most frequently asked questions with answers.

When will I be able to read Taylor & Francis articles on the publisher’s website again? Why should we negotiate on open access publishing with the publishers? Researchers cannot afford to pay the high APC fees. How can this be solved?

Answers to these and other questions can be found on the new Questions & answers webpage.

If you cannot find all the answers to your questions here, please e-mail us at finelib@helsinki.fi or contact your nearest library or information service.

Negotiations with Taylor & Francis hit a wall

28.1.2019

Negotiations between the FinELib consortium and Taylor & Francis ended with no positive results. The end of the negotiations means that access to Taylor & Francis journals will end on 1 February 2019.

FinELib’s goal was to provide researchers with access to journals published by Taylor & Francis and an opportunity to publish their articles open access, available to everyone. The publisher and the consortium have highly differing views of reasonable costs.

“This is an unfortunate situation. We are ready to continue the negotiations, provided that the publisher sets more reasonable demands”, says Arja Tuuliniemi who is in charge of FinELib services. “Universities and research institutions in Finland are highly committed to promoting open access publishing. However, the change towards open access cannot mean that scientific publications become more expensive.”

“It is very important for the scientific community that open access publishing increases. However, research organisations are not money-making tools for large publishers, and we cannot give in to the continuous demands for more money. This is a difficult situation, but a necessary one”, says Mikko Tolonen, an assistant professor in digital humanities at the University of Helsinki and a member of FinELib’s strategy group for journal negotiations.

The libraries and information services of the consortium’s member organisations help researchers, teachers and students to find alternative ways to access articles. Different ways to search for articles can also be found from FinELib’s Alternative Access site.

FinELib’s negotiations with Taylor & Francis and Wiley: A challenging situation

14.12.2018

The FinELib consortium is renegotiating its agreements with two major publishers, Wiley and Taylor & Francis. Current agreements will expire on 31 Dec 2018.

FinELib’s goal in the negotiations is to enable the consortium members to have access to scholarly journals and their researchers to publish open access without increasing the consortium’s total costs.  Unfortunately both of the Taylor & Francis and Wiley want to increase these costs significantly. Depending on how the negotiations proceed, these potential outcomes could materialize:

  • if FinELib is successful, the FinELib consortium authors may publish open access in Taylor & Francis and Wiley journals in the near future

  • if FinELib is unable to reach an agreement before the end of December, we may lose access to future articles and some of the already published content in these two publishers’ journals

What are the negotiations about?

FinELib wants to achieve transformative agreements and transfer the licensing costs to open access publishing. Currently the FinELib consortium pays several million euros to access Taylor & Francis’ and Wiley’s journals. The publishers require that a lot of new money is put into the system to include open access publishing, but the FinELib consortium does not see this as a fair or sustainable solution.

“The change towards open access must be quick, and achieved with cost neutral agreements. The Finnish university rectors cannot recommend the renewal of agreements that do not achieve these goals. We expect publishers to work with us on this issue”, says Seppo Parkkila, the vice rector of the University of Tampere, and the chair of FinELib’s strategy group for negotiations.

A global change toward open access

Enabling publishing in hybrid journals via the consortium agreements is FinELib’s goal for a transition period only. The ultimate goal is a publishing system, where subscription and hybrid journals have evolved to fully open journals. Open access gives research more visibility and the shared knowledge benefits the entire society, both in Finland and worldwide. This goal is shared globally by an increasing number of countries, research funders, and universities, as has been seen recently, for example, in the Plan S statement, the Berlin Open Access conference, China’s support to Plan S and the University of California’s and Sweden’s negotiations with publishers.

What next?

FinELib’s current contracts with Taylor & Francis and Wiley will expire on December 31, 2018. As that date approaches, the FinELib consortium members are preparing for various scenarios to provide scholars access to necessary articles with minimal disruption or delay, regardless of what happens with the negotiations.

More information:

Arja Tuuliniemi
Head of Services, FinELib-office, National Library of Finland
Tel: +358 2941 44294
Email: arja.tuuliniemi[at]helsinki.fi

Seppo Parkkila
Professor, vice rector, University of Tampere
Chair of FinELib’s strategy group for negotiations
seppo.parkkila[at]staff.uta.fi

FinELib organisations currently subscribing to Taylor & Francis and Wiley journal packages (pdf)

Finnish university rectors council UNIFI’s statement about the negotiations

Statement on Plan S

Berlin Open Access Conference press release

China backs bold plan to tear down journal paywalls (Nature, 05.12.2018)

University of California’s negotiations

Sweden’s negotiations

FinELib’s Springer Compact deal: An easy route for open access publishing

25.10.2018

The FinELib consortium and Springer Nature have signed an agreement regarding Springer Compact. The agreement ensures access to over 2200 scholarly journals as well as open access publishing in almost 1900 hybrid journals.

The agreement offers researchers affiliated to the subscribing organisations the opportunity to publish their scientific articles open access mainly under CC BY license. No additional APC payment is required from the authors. Publishing open access is the default option in this deal.

Since the beginning of October, already 39 articles have been approved for open access publishing under the agreement.

Clear and easy open access workflows are important for both the authors and the libraries. “We are pleased that neither researchers nor librarians have to spend time handling APC invoices and that the process of the library approving the articles runs smoothly. So far the feedback from the researchers has also been positive.” says Marjo Kuusela, librarian from Helsinki University Library, who approved the very first article covered by the deal.

FinELib’s Springer Compact deal covers 26 members of the FinELib consortium. The agreement term is 1.10.2018-31.12.2020 and the total value of the deal is close to EUR 5 000 000.

Further information about open access publishing under this agreement is available here.

The agreement documents will be published on FinELib website in due course.

University rectors demand scholarly publishers to transition to open access

25.9.2018

The license negotiations with scholarly publishers must advance the transition to open access publishing, the Finnish university rectors demand in a statement published today. Universities Finland UNIFI gives its full support to FinELib consortium’s negotiation goals.

In its negotiations with scholarly publishers, the FinELib consortium demands that researchers must be able to publish their articles open access without extra costs. This transition to open access publishing should happen with no increases to the total cost of scholarly publishing and journal subscriptions. The goal is to achieve immediate open access by 2020. If the negotiation goals are not reached, UNIFI does not recommend renewing license agreements with those publishers.

“Support from UNIFI is extremely important to FinELib consortium’s negotiations”, says Arja Tuuliniemi, the Head of Services in the National Library’s FinELib office. “This public statement from the university rectors signals clearly to the scholarly publishers that Finland plans to make a quick transition to open access publishing. FinELib’s agreements with scholarly publishers can no longer uphold the traditional model, where we pay millions of euros just to read scholarly journals.”

This autumn, FinELib will negotiate with Taylor & Francis, Wiley & Blackwell and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

UNIFI's press release

UNIFI’s statement

More information on FinELib negotiations

FinELib is a consortium of Finnish universities, research institutions and public libraries. Its mission is to secure and improve the availability of electronic resources. The consortium office operates at the National Library of Finland.

More information: Arja Tuuliniemi, arja.tuuliniemi@helsinki.fi, tel. 02941 44294

 

New FinELib agreements published

9.8.2018

FinELib agreements with Wiley, Wolters Kluwer and the American Chemical Society have now been published as a response to the FOI request.  Agreements are available online, see  https://finelib.fi/negotiations/negotiations/  section “Signed agreements”

FinELib signed an agreement with the American Chemical Society

9.8.2017

The FinElib-consortium and the American Chemical Society (ACS) have signed a 3-year agreement (2018-2020). The agreement covers access to ACS journals and free credits for open access publishing. Detailed information on the agreement, total fees per consortium member and the instructions to the authors are available online.

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