Public access request | VSNU

"In September 2016, the universities received a second request under the Government Information (Public Access) Act (Wet Openbaarheid Bestuur, or WOB) relating to open access. This request entailed: ‘provision of a copy of the open access licenses purchased by your institution in the past year from various publishers such as Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, ACS, SageKarger, Thieme, Walter de Gruyter, RSC, Emerald and any comparable licenses, with the essential understanding that the institution shall pay a previously-established fee to the publisher, in exchange for which the publisher will publish accepted academic articles by authors affiliated with your institution open access in licensed journals. My request also entails inspection of all supporting documents and correspondence, insofar as these may be relevant to a commercial evaluation of the licenses in question.’

This WOB request was conducted via a procedure similar to that of the first request with regard to inspection of the costs for each individual publisher. An article in the Volkskrant in December 2016 offered commentary on both WOB requests. Springer and Elsevier have lodged objections in connection with the procedure which are currently still under review. Consequently, this information has not yet been made public. An overview of the major elements of the requested contracts has been provided below. This table includes only those contracts entered into before the WOB request was submitted in September 2016."