French Institutes Cut Ties With Scientific Publishing Powerhouse - The Wire

"Couperin.org, a consortium of French institutes, estimated that the lack of a contract between them and SpringerNature was causing the publisher a loss of over $6 million

French universities and research institutes have cancelled their agreements with academic publishing giant SpringerNature and refused to make new ones. They’re saving millions of dollars in subscription costs because of this move, according to Times Higher Education. This decision was made after negotiations over subscription fees between Couperin.org, which represents over 250 academic institutions in France including the CNRS, and SpringerNature, the parent company of Springer, ended in a stalemate. SpringerNature publishes over 2,000 journals of Springer, Nature and BioMed Central. According to The Scientist, the national consortium did not agree to increased subscription fees that the publishers had proposed. In fact, French institutions had mandated Couperin.org to push for a reduction in subscription costs because researchers are increasingly publishing in open access journals, which require them to pay a processing fee for publishing, per a statement released by the consortium. It noted that while open access articles accounted for only 3% in 2014, they made up 8% of all articles published in 2017. “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– [the] demand driven by Couperin.org, a price reduction,” the statement said. Despite the absence of a contract for more than a year, SpringerNature has not cutoff access to its publications for French institutions. Researchers across the country were surprised to see they that had access to the publisher’s journals despite being told that they wouldn’t be able to do so after April 1, 2018...."