Principles for Journal Negotiations

What FinELib expects from publishers

As a national consortium representing Finnish universities, universities of applied sciences, research institutes, and public libraries, FinELib is committed to advancing open access and the financial sustainability of the research ecosystem.

FinELib does not consider the hybrid OA model a viable long-term solution and expects publishers to collaborate in creating an ecosystem where open access to publicly funded research is the default and where costs are transparent, justified, and mindful of the budgetary constraints the institutions work under.

To secure agreements that reflect the priorities of our members, FinELib has introduced a set of principles for open access agreements. These principles complement FinELib’s existing acquisition and open access requirements and guide our negotiations as well as the evaluation of proposals from 2026 onwards. Publishers are expected to demonstrate how their proposals, fees, terms, and business models are aligned with these principles.

In response to stagnant ecosystem progress, several consortium members have implemented Rights Retention policies to enable alternative OA models.

Transition to Open Access

  1. Publishers should commit to a swift transition to non-volume based fully open access models. This includes flipping existing titles and not launching new hybrid titles.

  2. Open access must be offered as the default.

  3. Agreements should be uncapped and cover all research articles by corresponding authors across the collection.

Fair, Sustainable, and Transparent Pricing

  1. Agreements should reduce and constrain the total costs of access and publication.

  2. Pricing models should be transparent, with fees based on actual service costs rather than surplus generation.

  3. Fees should reflect the financial pressures faced by institutions and be affordable to the communities who created, peer-reviewed and funded the research outputs.

  4. Per-article costs (total costs ÷ total number of articles) should be in line with comparable FinELib agreements. Agreements that are overpriced and deliver poor value for money by FinELib’s internal metrics should be realigned; maximizing profits cannot justify inflated charges for publicly funded research.

  5. Publishers should not charge the author or their institution any additional publishing fees, including APCs "in the wild" (outside of OA deals) in hybrid titles, page charges, colour charges, supplemental charges or any other charges.

  6. Several Finnish institutions have adopted institutional rights retention policies. FinELib categorically rejects all business models requiring fees for depositing AAMs in institutional repositories under a CC-BY license and will not commit to paying any such charges.

  7. The author’s choice of licence should not affect the APC.

  8. Titles that change their publishing model must remain within the agreement.

  9. Agreements must protect the value of the deal against title withdrawals.

  10. Publishers should provide complete and accurate data on all charges, including APCs “in the wild” (outside of OA deals) in both hybrid and fully OA journals to enable transparency and evaluation.

  11. Price reductions should not be achieved by cutting content.

  12. All OA agreements will be made publicly available on the ESAC Registry including pricing. Non-disclosure clauses will not be accepted.

Author Rights and Open Scholarly Ecosystem

  1. Authors must retain copyright.

  2. CC BY must be available and applied as the default licence.

  3. Agreements should permit the use of licensed content with AI tools for research, teaching, and learning.

  4. Agreements must acknowledge rights held by institutions and end users under Finnish copyright law.

  5. Publishers should avoid introducing restrictive last-minute additions or unexpected terms into negotiations.

  6. Publishers should collaborate with FinELib and key intermediaries such as CrossRef and OA Switchboard to streamline workflows.

  7. Publishers are encouraged to integrate ORCID, ROR and other community-led open identifiers into their workflows.

  8. Publishers should share comprehensive, open, and up-to-date metadata including affiliations with community-owned open services (e.g. CrossRef) to improve discoverability, interoperability, and research integrity.

  9. Publishers should promote open science practices (e.g. open data, preprints) under FAIR principles.

 

 

Take advantage of open access benefits

During negotiations, open access benefits have been agreed upon regarding the journals of the following publishers.

More information about publisher- and organisation-specific open access benefits is also available from your own library.