Continuing the Elsevier deal with the current terms is no longer financially sustainable

A wide range of Finnish higher education and research institutions participate in the Elsevier agreement. The agreement includes reading access to journals in Elsevier’s Freedom Collection as well as to selected Cell Press journals.

The agreement enables researchers to publish open access articles at no additional cost to authors in Freedom and Cell Press hybrid journals as long as the publishing quota included in the agreement has not been exhausted. In addition, researchers receive a 15 percent discount on publication fees in fully open access journals covered by the agreement.

One important problem with the current agreement is that it does not enable all authors to publish their articles open access. The quota for free open access articles will be exhausted in the Autumn, forcing authors to seek alternative routes for opening their publications and causing frustration within the research community. Our goal is that, in the future, authors can publish open access without having to worry about running out of article quotas, says Kaisa Miettinen, Vice Rector for Research at the University of Jyväskylä and Chair of the FinELib Steering Group.

Another key issue is the overall cost of the agreement. The Elsevier agreement is significantly more expensive than FinELib’s comparable agreements. Finnish universities and research institutions simply cannot afford such an expensive agreement going forward, emphasizes Minna Niemi‑Grundström, University Librarian at the University of Helsinki.

The FinELib unit at the National Library of Finland systematically monitors the costs and benefits of consortium agreements. Data collected to support the ongoing negotiations shows that the Elsevier agreement is also exceptionally expensive in terms of cost per published article.

The FinELib negotiation group includes Kaisa Miettinen, Vice Rector for Research at the University of Jyväskylä and Chair of the FinELib Steering Group, Jyri Hämäläinen, Vice Rector for Research at Aalto University, and Minna Niemi‑Grundström, University Librarian at the University of Helsinki, as well as experts from the FinELib unit.

Finnish higher education institutions and research organizations are seeking substantial changes to the agreement. The key objectives are to remove the publication quota, so that there are no caps on the number of open access articles, and to significantly reduce the overall cost of the agreement. At the same time, it is important to retain comprehensive reading access to journals included in the Freedom Collection.

The FinELib negotiation group is strongly committed to finding a solution that ensures both openness and cost‑effectiveness for Finnish research. Advancing open science while maintaining financial sustainability is in the shared interest of the entire research community. The Finnish community has expressed strong support for these negotiation objectives, says Jyri Hämäläinen, Vice Rector for Research at Aalto University.