Technische Universiteit Eindhoven: Negotiations between VSNU and Elsevier on open access run aground

"Negotiations on a new contract between the university libraries and Publisher Elsevier have run aground in a conflict about open access: free access to scientific articles. The news appeared today in the national newspapers De Volkskrant and NRC. The universities are keen to quickly move to full openness for all Dutch publications. The Dutch universities and the government are big champions of freely accessible publications, with the universities paying for the publication. According to the association of universities in the Netherlands (VSNU), the proposal made last week by Elsevier made no concessions to the desired and necessary move to open access and, moreover, it raised the costs of journal subscriptions considerably. The Dutch universities are not at all happy about the proposal by Elsevier and have offered Elsevier an opportunity to come up with a more appropriate proposal. Over the next few weeks the universities will be preparing themselves for a situation whereby journal subscriptions are not renewed. If this is unavoidable, then researchers will still have access to old issues of Elsevier journals, and can still publish in Elsevier journals, but there will no longer be access to the new issues (as of 1-1-2015). The universities are looking into possible solutions that can be offered.   As soon as more is known, TU/e will inform its staff ..."