Couperin does not renew the national agreement with Springer

"In 2018, French researchers do not read the magazines SpringerNature: Couperin.org the consortium does not renew the national agreement with this editor  

Researchers from research organizations and universities in France will more subscribers in 2018 to Springer journals. The access will be maintained until then cut the 1 st of April, according to statements by the publisher. This comes after 13 months of intense negotiations with SpringerNature, conducted by the National Consortium Couperin.org. Couperin.org representing over 250 institutions of higher education, research and health: universities, schools, research organizations including the CNRS, hospitals such as the AP-HP, AP-HM or the Hospices Civils de Lyon. Negotiations have stalled as a result of the divergence of economic approach between the publisher and the higher education and research institutions. French academic research has mandated the consortium to get a reduction in price of the subscription contract. This requirement is based on a qualitative analysis of the Springer collection and usage.

The international development of the method of publication in open access (free access) "author pays" led to a significant increase in the content published in open access in magazines distributed by paid subscription by SpringerNature. According to the study conducted by the consortium Couperin.org, articles in open access represents 8% of the Springer journal content in subscription in 2017  ; they represented only 3% of the content in 2014.

What the author pays fashion? The author pays the publisher publication costs (APC item processing costs ) so that his article is published in open access in 'hybrid' journals; Hybrid journal publishes both content and open access content in subscription, hence the need to maintain subscriptions. Ironically, the cost of subscriptions increased despite the increased share of free articles. The expense of establishments increases twice from side to pay the Open Access publication charges in journals under paid subscription, and the other to maintain the subscription to these magazines, to access articles accessible only under subscription  

The continued increase in the share of articles published in open access makes it difficult to sustain the maintenance of an increase in subscription costs policy. It justifies the contrary, demand driven by Couperin.org a price reduction. The publisher justifies its policy of increasing subscription costs by increasing the number of articles published in its journals in 1185, estimated at 3% per year. The editor shows a purely quantitative conception of its product, considered as a set of products growing, regardless of otherwise quality. At the same time, the use of the Springer journals is down and focus on one third of the collection: this phenomenon is paradoxical since the number of items available is growing, it can legitimately wonder about the evolution of the quality of published content. It confirms the widely expressed by researchers on the dangers associated with the continued increase in the number of journals and articles published. This increase in the volume of scientific publications would corollary general impoverishment of the quality of content, regularly denounce the scientists. After 13 months of negotiations, the proposal by SpringerNature always includes a tariff increase, albeit very limited, but instead proposed rate far from the expectations of the research community. The increasing costs of scientific information now capture a too important part of institutional budgets, a share that can be used to finance research activities or used to support editorial diversity. This situation represents a threat to the research, while researchers are the producers of the information they provide for free to publishers, and they assure, always free, evaluation and editorial management.

The lack of agreement between SpringerNature and Couperin.org consortium is for the publisher a shortfall of over € 5M per year; inaccessibility of Springer journals in the French research units will have on these reviews a negative impact in terms of citations and articles submissions. Higher education and research institutions are more willing to see their spending grow indefinitely subscriptions; the development of content available in open access, the existence of alternative access to information means make less strong researchers dependence and reduce their "willingness to pay" their willingness to pay ever more astronomical sums to access the information they produce and validate the benefit of publishers. The development of open access, undeniable future of scientific communication must not in any way support or justify the continuation of the spiraling costs."