Publisher drops plan to charge extra for old papers after outcry | THE News

"Publisher proposed to bring in extra charges for digital papers published more than 20 years ago. Publisher Taylor & Francis has dropped plans to charge extra for access to older research papers online, after more than 110 universities signed a letter of protest. The latest renewal of UK universities’ deal with Taylor & Francis, which was agreed in principle at the end of January but is yet to be signed, for the first time covered papers published only in the past 20 years. Papers published in a one-year window between 1997 – seen as the year that the digital academic publishing era began – and 1998 would have been placed in a “modern archive”, and universities would have had to purchase access to this as a separate package. Significantly, the 20-year span of papers included in the main deal, known as the “front file”, would have moved forward in time with each advancing year. This meant that the number of papers in the modern archive would get larger every year and costs could escalate. In 2023, for example, universities would have had to pay for access to papers published between 1997 and 2003 as a separate package...."