FinELib agreements open the results of science for all

12.4.2021

FinELib consortium concludes journal package agreements, which promote the openness of science, with scientific publishers. The goal is that the agreements cover the Article Processing Charges (APC) on behalf of the authors. In 2020, FinELib agreements enabled the publishing of nearly 2900 Finnish Open Access articles in the journals of various publishers.

In 2020 FinELib had 11 journal package agreements which enabled Open Access publishing of articles for the authors without APC or with a discounted APC. Thanks to the agreements about 2900 articles were published – 65% more than during the previous year.

During 2020, new agreements were negotiated for 2021 to increase the number of Open Access articles. The expectation is that the number of Open Access articles will double during the year 2021:

* estimate

Agreements covered an increasing number of articles

Depending on the publisher, the FinELib agreements contain different kinds of Open Access benefits for the subscribing organisations.

All article processing charges were covered by the subscription fees of three journal package agreements: Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), SAGE Premier and SCOAP3.

Springer Compact agreement was estimated to cover all Open Access articles, but publishing was so active that by December the benefits were used up.

100% Open Access publishing was not achieved in all journal packages. However, subscription fees covered the majority of the articles also in the following journal packages:

  • Wiley Online Library
  • Taylor & Francis Social Science & Humanities and Science & Technology
  • American Chemical Society (ACS)
  • Emerald Premier

Based on the FinELib agreement, researchers could have published a large part of their articles Open Access in the Wolters Kluwer Lippincott journals. However, only a few researchers used Open Access publishing benefit because the publisher's publication process made Open Access publishing difficult.

Resources with discounts on APC’s in 2020 were Elsevier SD Freedom (50% discount) and Science Advances (15% discount).

The various Open Access benefits described above affect the number of Open Access articles of all articles published in the journals covered by the agreements:

The share of Open Access articles published in the journals covered by the FinELib agreements in 2020.

Free Open Access publishing for researchers is increasing rapidly

As a result of the 2020 negotiations distinctly better Open Access benefits were achieved with Elsevier, Emerald and ACS in the new agreements that started in January 2021.

It is estimated that the Elsevier subscription fee will cover Open Access publishing of all articles from researchers of the subscribing organisations in the journals included in the agreement.

The subscription fees of Emerald and ACS now cover a distinctly larger part of the Open Access articles than during the year 2020: on the part of ACS, approximately all articles starting January 2021. On the part of Emerald, the same will be achieved in 2022.

Furthermore, with IEEE and Oxford University Press agreements containing Open Access publishing were successfully negotiated: for both, the subscription fee will cover approximately 100% of future articles.

In Wiley, Emerald, SAGE, ACS, and IEEE agreements Open Access publishing benefits cover both hybrid and fully Open Access journals. In other agreements, Open Access publishing is limited to hybrid journals only.

The Open Access benefits negotiated by FinELib are found here: Take Advantage of OA Benefits.

See more about FinELib agreements: Agreements.