German science organizations strike open-access deal with Elsevier | Science | AAAS

"A new open-access publishing deal announced today has finally put to bed a long-running tussle between German science organizations and the publishing giant Elsevier. The agreement will allow German academics to publish open-access, or free-to-read, papers in the publisher’s journals at discounted fees, and give their institutions access to the full range of Elsevier titles at no extra cost.

Compared with the previous subscription-based arrangements, “We get a lot more for lots less money,” says Günter Ziegler, president of the Free University of Berlin and lead negotiator of Project DEAL, a nationwide consortium of universities and science funders that brokered the agreement. “That’s quite an achievement.”

The deal has been a long time coming. Project DEAL was set up in 2014 to negotiate agreements that would allow German-authored papers to be read for free after publication around the world while also giving German institutions full access to a wide range of journals, including paywalled ones. Negotiators hoped such agreements would both increase access and reduce institutions’ costs. The goal was a “publish and read” agreement, in which publishers are paid based solely on the number of articles published and in return provide access to all their journals...."