Looking for better value

14.11.2023

Which scholarly journal agreements offer good value for money for higher education and research? Which agreements make a difference for open publishing, and which agreements give access to the most important journals? And above all, what is a fair and sustainable price for this?

FinELib consortium is seeking answers to these questions when negotiating with scholarly publishers.

FinELib is currently negotiating with seven scholarly journal publishers. The goal is to significantly reduce the price of scholarly journal agreements. In the background are the challenging financial situations at higher education and research institutions, as well as the increasing costs of journal subscriptions.

When evaluating agreements and offers, FinELib emphasizes obtaining the best possible value from the agreements. Evaluation considers factors such as pricing, the quality of the journals included in the agreement, the sufficiency of open access article allowance, and the publisher's commitment to open publishing.

If the price does not reflect the true value of the dealor if there are other significant shortcomings in the offer, FinELib is prepared not to renew the agreement. If the publisher's offer aligns with FinELib’s goals, a new agreement can be signed.

However, each higher education and research institution individually assesses whether the agreement is good enough for them and whether it's worth joining.

FinELib is also considering agreements with publishers that it currently doesn’t have agreements with. Both established smaller and medium-sized publishers, as well as newer open access publishers, are being considered. When evaluating who to start negotiating with, FinELib considers eg. the importance of the publisher's journals to the consortium's members, pricing, and the publisher's commitment to open publishing.

The goal is to achieve agreements that ensure access to important resources for higher education and research and provide researchers with the opportunity to publish their articles open access in the journals of their choice. At the same time, it is important to keep the costs of the agreements at a level that allows FinELib member organizations to subscribe to the materials important to them.

FinELib consortium is currently re-negotiating seven scientific journal agreements with a combined value of over 16 million euros in 2023. These agreements enabled the open publishing of a total of 3,660 scientific articles in 2022. Publishers currently negotiating with FinELib include American Chemical Society (ACS), Elsevier (SD Freedom collection), Emerald, IEEE, Oxford University Press, Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), and Springer Nature (Springer Compact collection). All Finnish universities, universities of applied sciences and numerous research institutions and public organizations participate in scholarly journal agreements as members of the FinELib consortium.