Europe Expanded the "No Elsevier Deal" Zone & This Could Change Everything | Hilda Bastian | Absolutely Maybe

"A couple of heavy-duty battering rams have hit the journal subscription system in Europe. And they are so big, this will likely set off a chain reaction that changes the scholarly communication system at least subtly – and possibly dramatically. Let’s start with context, so the implications are clearer. This is roughly how the subscription system works for institutions. They can subscribe to individual journals, one by one. Or they can get a bundled deal on a portfolio of journals from a publisher. Either way, it’s expensive. And it never covers absolutely every possible subscription journal on the planet: articles in the rest have to be acquired either via a library that has access to the journal, or by buying that article individually from the journal. For an individual entitled to use an institution’s library service, this is what happens. When you’re onsite or logged in from outside, you don’t hit a paywall for everything that’s either covered by the subscription deals – or is free-to-read for everyone anyway. (In biomedicine, my estimate is that about 40% of the literature that’s past embargo – over a year old – is free-to-read for everyone. It’s less, though, in other fields.)..."