Swiss € 57million Elsevier deal | Open Access Monitoring

Author: Christian Gutknecht

[...] Anyone who has been following me activity knows I have repeatedly advocated for Read & Publish Agreements as a realistic way to OA (e.g. here)

The fact that my demand eventually has been implemented, makes me only halfway satisfied. The agreement comes years too late and in an environment where the parameters have already changed significantly again (e.g. Sci-Hub, Plan S, Elsevier Cancellation Germany and in other countries).

Unfortunately, you can see from the agreement how it was reached. The Swiss negotiating delegation was held up for a very long time by Elsevier, only to agree to something half-baked shortly before the end of 2019. Obviously the negotiation team had not the courage to cancel the subscriptions, like they did for Springer Nature.

Particularly disturbing is the fact that a 4-year contract was signed right away. Why not start with a 1-2 year contract in order to gain experience and to be able to correct any undesirable developments, like those which now come apparent? Now, swissuniversities has given up all its trump cards for four years and may soon have to advertise hybrid OA Elsevier if the publication volume does not develop as anticipated. It would actually be desirable if fewer Swiss authors were to publish in hybrid journals from Elsevier, but in genuine Open Access journals. The signal that this agreement sends out to genuine Gold Open Access publishers is also fatal. Without a public call for tenders, Elsevier has been awarded a mega-contract, while those publishers who have actually been striving for OA for years and can deliver it more cheaply will be left out in the cold.

With a PAR fee of over 4500 EUR, the price level is already extremely high, which once again shows that OA in Switzerland does not fail because of the lack of money.

The money has now been used to buy 30% OA from Elsevier. But for the 100% that swissuniversities wants to achieve by 2024, a lot still has to happen.