The costs must be reduced – FinELib negotiates on openness of scholarly publications

20.4.2023

FinELib's steering group has stated that the prices of journal packages being negotiated this year must be significantly reduced. This is crucial for higher education and research institutes to continue to license the materials.

Read & publish agreements have significantly increased open publishing in the FinELib consortium, but the current cost level of the agreements is not sustainable.

This year the consortium is negotiating the renewal of seven journal contracts:

  • American Chemical Society (ACS)
  • Elsevier
  • Emerald
  • IEEE
  • Oxford University Press (OUP)
  • Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and
  • Springer.

With these agreements, the total of 3660 scientific articles were published open access in 2022. The total value of these journal packages is over 16 million euro in 2023.

In addition to a fair price, the consortium requires publishers to commit to furthering open publishing. New agreements must also meet the FinELib acquisition principles, which define the minimum requirements for journal usage rights and open publishing.