ALLEA STATEMENT ON OPEN ACCESS PUBLICATION UNDER “BIG DEALS” AND THE NEW COPYRIGHT RULES

"While the rising number of Gold OA publications facilitated by these deals is to be applauded, they do not deliver on the triple promise of OA. In particular, they have not led to a reduction in the exorbitant costs to the academic community incurred in the process of research publication. While the downstream costs of journal subscriptions are gradually falling, the upstream costs of publication, made up of the APCs, have risen sharply. Concomitantly, the imposition of APCs has created new, and sometimes insurmountable, barriers to publication for researchers that are not affiliated to a contracting institution. In addition, as already underlined in previous ALLEA Statements,6,7 the Gold OA model creates a disadvantage for those coming from less wealthy countries and institutions, under-funded researchers in the social sciences and humanities, and early career researchers, among others. For these academics, OA of published research comes at the expense of closure of first-tier publication fora. In addition, ALLEA is concerned that the conditions of the “Big Deals” fail to adequately reflect the rules on copyright law in the European Union (EU), and do not fairly value the creative and research endeavours of researchers and their institutions, as well as their investment and efforts over time to generate research results and publications to the benefit of the public...."