University rectors demand scholarly publishers to transition to open access

The license negotiations with scholarly publishers must advance the transition to open access publishing, the Finnish university rectors demand in a statement published today. Universities Finland UNIFI gives its full support to FinELib consortium’s negotiation goals.

In its negotiations with scholarly publishers, the FinELib consortium demands that researchers must be able to publish their articles open access without extra costs. This transition to open access publishing should happen with no increases to the total cost of scholarly publishing and journal subscriptions. The goal is to achieve immediate open access by 2020. If the negotiation goals are not reached, UNIFI does not recommend renewing license agreements with those publishers.

“Support from UNIFI is extremely important to FinELib consortium’s negotiations”, says Arja Tuuliniemi, the Head of Services in the National Library’s FinELib office. “This public statement from the university rectors signals clearly to the scholarly publishers that Finland plans to make a quick transition to open access publishing. FinELib’s agreements with scholarly publishers can no longer uphold the traditional model, where we pay millions of euros just to read scholarly journals.”

This autumn, FinELib will negotiate with Taylor & Francis, Wiley & Blackwell and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

UNIFI's press release

UNIFI’s statement

More information on FinELib negotiations

FinELib is a consortium of Finnish universities, research institutions and public libraries. Its mission is to secure and improve the availability of electronic resources. The consortium office operates at the National Library of Finland.

More information: Arja Tuuliniemi, arja.tuuliniemi@helsinki.fi, tel. 02941 44294