
Germany vs. Elsevier: universities win temporary free journal access - delib
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-00093-7
======
Certhas
The stated goals of the German universities are:

• Teilnehmereinrichtungen: alle zur Teilnahme an Allianz- und Nationallizenzen
berechtigten Einrichtungen in Deutschland.

• Die DEAL-Einrichtungen haben dauerhaften Volltextzugriff auf das gesamte
Titel-Portfolio (E-Journals) der ausgewählten Verlage.

• Alle Publikationen von Autorinnen und Autoren aus deutschen Einrichtungen
werden automatisch Open Access geschaltet (CC-BY, inkl. Peer Review).

• Angemessene Bepreisung nach einem einfachen, zukunftsorientierten
Berechnungsmodell, das sich am Publikationsaufkommen orientiert.

Basically: Give us access to everything you have, publish all our authors open
access, and we'll pay you an appropriate amount, relative to how many papers
of ours you publish. They call this the PAR model, for publish&read. Springer
and Wiley have in principle agreed to negotiate a PAR license [1].

This would be enormous, especially as other countries would have a blueprint
what to ask for. It also shows just how poorly the UK has handled their
renegotiation (it was generally seen as the UK caving completely) [2].

[1] An English presentation from the end of last year on the state of things:
[https://www.projekt-deal.de/wp-
content/uploads/2017/10/2017-...](https://www.projekt-deal.de/wp-
content/uploads/2017/10/2017-10-16_ICOLC_DEAL_final.pdf)

[2] [https://gowers.wordpress.com/2016/11/29/time-for-
elsexit/](https://gowers.wordpress.com/2016/11/29/time-for-elsexit/)

~~~
sleavey
I thought UK research councils now require open access publications, either
provided by journals ("gold") or by placing manuscripts on open archives
("green"). While this typically involves grant holders paying more for
publication (since open access journals usually charge more), it's hardly
"caving completely", unless I'm missing something...?

~~~
revelation
I don't see how requiring grant holders to spend money on the Elsevier "open
access" fees is a win for the council? You can always pay more, the point of
negotiation is to get more for less. _Mandating_ that researchers pay the
Elsevier fees seems like a clear-cut win for Elsevier...

You start out with full rights to your paper. Then you hand over a exclusive
"do whatever you want license" to Elsevier for free. Then the UK council
requires you to further _pay Elsevier_ so the paper is downloadable from their
shitty-ass website. That is an unmitigated disaster.

~~~
sleavey
I completely agree this is a stupid system that profits mainly Elsevier and
other toxic journals. But this still seems to me to be a step in the right
direction compared to before, when researchers were not obliged to public
their publicly-funded research publicly. Now they are, which is the way it
always should have been.

It seems to me that the current peer review model is dying anyway, and new
technology (especially the web) is slowly but surely killing it, especially in
the fields of computing science and mathematics. I commend Germany's approach,
but I don't think the UK's approach was a _complete_ disaster.

------
Vinnl
So many people in the open access community are holding their breath waiting
for what happens when access is cut off - with the expectation that there will
not really be a backlash, making the negotiating position stronger.

This move by Elsevier implies that they share this expectation, in which case
this would be the best move they could do, but by giving away that they don't
think their position is strong, they effectively still weaken their position.

So all in all, if the German negotiators remain firm (and it looks like they
will), the prospects for open access appear to be pretty good.

(Note that when I talk about open access, I mean the entire set of ideals
usually associated with it as described at [1], not just "pay $3000 to $5000
to make a single article available.)

[1] [https://fairoa.org/](https://fairoa.org/)

~~~
pault
Sorry for the naive question, but why don't the universities collaborate to
publish their own open access journals? Don't the ivy leagues have enough
prestige to pull it off? Why is Elsevier needed in the information age?

~~~
xtreme
Universities are not a monolith, they are composed of many independent
individuals. It is difficult to convince young researchers (PhD students,
Post-Docs, Assistant professors) to "gamble" their future by publishing in new
journals. It requires some push from the top, e.g. NSF making it mandatory to
publish results from their grants in open access journals.

~~~
pault
So it's basically one big game of prisoner's dilemma. :)

~~~
Tenobrus
Just like nearly all parts of human society.

~~~
FabHK
And it's somewhat disheartening to see that even academics (who should be in a
position to see what's going on) frequently can't come together to cooperate
and be better off.

~~~
KSteffensen
My experience with academia is that it's a kindergarden. Everybody has silly
personal 20+ year vendettas going on. I'm not at all surprised that academics
are unable to co-operate.

------
pedrocr
_> “Most papers are now freely available somewhere on the Internet, or else
you might choose to work with preprint versions. Clearly our negotiating
position is strong. It is not clear that we want or need a paid extension of
the old contracts.”_

Awesome! It's going to be fun when Elsevier eventually tries to go after
SciHub in Germany for copyright violations. I can imagine state prosecutors
asking: "So you want us to prosecute someone for not paying you for access to
public research?". One can hope...

~~~
semi-extrinsic
I don't think Elsevier see SciHub as the biggest threat. No, the biggest
threat is that now the EU has told researchers "You have to publish OA",
researchers have two options: publish preprints of everything, or start paying
Elsevier loads of cash. Obviously everyone is now starting to do the first
option (usually via institutional repos, which at least Google Scholar
indexes). And people are finding it to be a good low-effort system.

Elsevier lost when they agreed to allow people (mostly just some people in
math and physics back then) to post preprints online.

~~~
Vinnl
I think you are overestimating the system. Researchers are going for the
second option in large droves, as that's the one that helps their career
forward, and it's often not their own money they're paying with.

If you're interested, I've written about why they're forced to do so at [1]
and [2]. (And the reason I'm following it so closely is because I'm trying to
fix it - if you want to follow that, see [3].)

[1] [https://medium.com/flockademic/the-vicious-cycle-of-
scholarl...](https://medium.com/flockademic/the-vicious-cycle-of-scholarly-
publishing-eef794937c9c)

[2] [https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous-number-that-
ca...](https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous-number-that-can-make-or-
break-academic-careers-704e00ae070a)

[3] [https://tinyletter.com/Flockademic](https://tinyletter.com/Flockademic)

~~~
kurthr
Well, it's not their own money (to spend on coke and whores), but typically
those are still their research funds so they have to make a decision as to
whether to publish or buy new equipment, supplies, or get another TA/RA
position. Often the funds are pre-loaded with overhead for the department so
it's more expensive than it appears.

Indexed preprints make a whole lot of sense, if they'll let you do it.

~~~
Vinnl
Well, to some extent. If it's their own research funds, they will have to
consider what's better for their career, and often, that publication will win
over new equipment, for example.

That said, there are often funds available from e.g. the library, your funder,
or even nationwide funds such as in the Netherlands and I think the UK, that
will cover the costs of making articles available as open access. It's pretty
much a no-brainer to use them for researchers.

------
heinrichhartman
Interesting move, to give free access. You would think that, withholding
access is a great way for Elsivier to increase pressure in the negotiation.
The fact, that they are not doing it, shows how weak their position really is.

Researchers will (and have) find effective ways to share research results w/o
traditional publishers. This would surface very quickly once access was
temporarily revoked.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _shows how weak their position really is_

Or Elsevier’s belief that the opposition is tenuously formed. If temporary
free access prompts a critical mass to decamp, Elsevier will have staved off
both permanence and precedent.

~~~
Vinnl
Why would that prompt them to decamp?

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Why would that prompt them to decamp?_

People tend to become politically involved (loosely defined) when desperate.
Remove the source of desperation and engagement fades. Convincing people to
come to a meeting or go to a rally or draft a letter to the dean or call or
write to their representative gets harder when the problem goes from specific,
_e.g._ I need X study to write my paper, to abstract.

~~~
Vinnl
But there was no source of desperation yet - there has not been a period in
which researchers have not had access.

(Well, technically, there was a short one at the start of last year IIRC, but
Elsevier prolonged access then just as well.)

~~~
gkya
I'd guess most researchers use libraries' copies of these pricy papers. So
it's mostly about tax money Elsevier forces university libraries to pay all
around the world. And also independent researchers.

~~~
Vinnl
Yes, and those libraries are the ones whose access was extended free of
charge.

------
erdbeerkuchen
Here is a list of universities and other institutions which have cancelled
their contracts with Elsevier: [https://www.projekt-
deal.de/vertragskundigungen-elsevier-201...](https://www.projekt-
deal.de/vertragskundigungen-elsevier-2017/)

~~~
majidazimi
Basically everyone... All top universities are in the list...

~~~
FabHK
Reading that list warmed my heart. Hasta la vista, Elsevier!

------
woliveirajr
> The nationwide deal sought by scientists includes a open-access option,
> under which all corresponding authors affiliated with German institutions
> would be allowed to make their papers free to read and share by anyone in
> the world.

This is a very good clause to the German institutions. Everybody will like to
exchange letters, informations, get in contact with German authors. And when
we have communication, we have knowledge and data sharing, and everybody
benefits from it. Specially the corresponding authors.

~~~
Vinnl
That's already often allowed. What the negotiators will want is that all those
papers will be free to read (or actually: use, under a permissive Creative
Commons license) by default.

------
jjhbw
Great developments. I am a bit pessimistic, however, as Elsevier still has all
the publications related to the life and medical sciences in a stranglehold. I
think the lacklustre adoption of preprint publishing in these fields is partly
to blame.

------
brookside
There is an increasing awareness of the "reproducibility crisis"[1] where it
seems a large portion of published scientific studies have dubious findings.

I wonder if this is another argument to overthrow Elsevier to as clearly their
peer review for publication is a poor filter. Or, is it possible the peer
review process will become even weaker in a new more open paradigm?

[1] [http://www.bbc.com/news/science-
environment-39054778](http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39054778)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Maybe for open Internet publishing, instead of publish/don't publish peer
review, it'd make sense to have a rating of the reproducibility. If you could
search only for reproducible papers that met a threshold, you'd know what you
were reading.

~~~
Vinnl
Unfortunately, that requires people to actually attempt to reproduce papers
and to publish about that, and often nobody wants to fund that.

------
aurizon
Elsevier and their lackeys and running dogs of documentary oppression are
nothing more than an elevated street gang that uses the assigned mandatory
copyright. Copyright has expanded without limit and now acts as the weapon
that Elsevier wields against the people. Look at how the Disney Corp lobbied
for ever longer copyrights. This can only be solved by national governments
taking back academic authors rights by law. Sadly Elsevier bribes (AKA
'lobbys') with their war chest of money stolen from authors. With current
cloud tech, they could be replaced in days. All the prior archives should also
be freed by legislation.

------
inglor
Is there a service where I could pay around $5-$10 a month and get access to
all (most) relevant papers?

I'm not a scientist, I'm not affiliated with any academic institution at the
moment (I still TA here and there though).

~~~
a3_nm
You can simply use Sci-hub. I don't see any moral argument against it. The
research that you want to access was probably entirely done by researchers who
don't get a dime of the subscription money of publishers.

~~~
FabHK
And research, writing, and peer-review was publicly funded most likely anyway.

------
mnm1
"Most papers are now freely available somewhere on the Internet, or else you
might choose to work with preprint versions."

This is a huge win for proponents of free information sharing like Scihub and
others. Germany's argument seems to basically boil down to, make us a
favorable deal or we'll just pirate or obtain from other sources and Elsevier
will lose out completely. Brilliant! I love their boldness and willingness to
have some balls to fight for science instead of corporate greed in this
negotiation.

~~~
Vinnl
While I'm sure they're aware of Sci-Hub, they're not referring to that (well,
not explicitly...). For example, another option is inter-library loan.

------
Havoc
That's hilarious. Elsevier will lose this fight for sure...it's exactly the
type of thing Germans will stubbornly dig in their feet out of principle for.

------
djhworld
I get recruitment spam from Elsevier recruiters a lot, I wasn't entirely sure
of what they did (at University we had subscriptions to IEEE and ACM and
another one I can't recall the name of for CS stuff) so the name wasn't
familiar to me.

I'm still not enitirely sure what value they offer?

~~~
ImaCake
A lot of life sciences papers are published in Elsevier journals.
Unfortunately, there are very few pre-prints.

------
jacquesm
Someone should use this to download all the papers available for 'archival
purposes'.

~~~
hh3k0
The will ban you quite fast if you attempt that. In fact, I think they ban
(and have banned) entire IP ranges/whole universities for that.

------
zerostar07
meh. sci-hub.tv has permanent free access

~~~
jordigh
How exactly are the DNS blocks happening? How did you find this domain that is
still working?

~~~
jsilence
Wondering why SciHub is not yet on some sort of IPFS / FreeNet / Tor Storage
something. Plain file storage obviously would not be enough, metadata and
possibly full text index would have to be stored with each entry. Searchable.
could even come with a recommendation service like Mendeley or Researchgate
based on which papers you pinned in your client.

~~~
Vinnl
The Sci-Hub website is (and will likely remain) reachable through Tor,
Wikipedia lists its Onion address.

~~~
jsilence
Okay cool, but still it is only run by one single entity. Wouldn't it be nice
if everyone in the community could contribute to keep it running?

~~~
Vinnl
Ah, yes, but given the perseverance of the publishers in prosecuting them, I'm
afraid it's unlikely for a community to step up to do that.

------
60devs
What is the role of the publisher? I think there are many ways to publish
things nowadays... Is the publisher responsible for peer review? Or how does
that system work?

~~~
cbcoutinho
The value that rests with the publisher is mainly the reputation of specific
journals it maintains. In some (most?) scientific fields, publishing in a
high-reputation journal is of primary importance for grant funding, author's
job prospects, attracting top talent, etc.

For example, the _Journal of Membrane Science_ is one of the most highly
regarded journals in my field. Anyone in the field can be pretty confident
that an article in that journal is a high-quality work, meaning it's
scientifically rigorous and representative of the state of the art.
Researchers want to publish in that journal so that they are associated with
'the best' in their field.

Articles in another journal, _Membranes_ , which I just discovered now on
Google, would not receive the same amount of credence from professionals in
the field. This is partly due to practitioners themselves unwilling to trust
lesser-known journals; however, professionals are busy and need an easy way to
filter feed from the chaff. The value provided by Elsevier in that sense is
that they maintain a type of filter of quality.

I'm sure all of the same authors and professionals could start a new journal
and immediately stop publishing in _Journal of Membrane Science_ , but it
could be a less-than-optimal career choice. In a sense, timing would be
everything.

~~~
Vinnl
Well... The value Elsevier provides is that it attracts the people who
maintain the filter of quality - namely the editorial board.

An interesting case is Lingua, an Elsevier journal. A few years ago, its
editorial board (i.e. regular researchers not employed by Elsevier)
collectively resigned and founded the new journal Glossa. That is now the
journal that provides that stamp of quality, proving that its not Elsevier
itself that provides it.

See also
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossa_(journal)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossa_\(journal\))

~~~
cbcoutinho
Cool thanks for the link on Glossa. I always thought it was possible for a
collective resignation of an editorial board but I've never seen it realized.

I'm curious why/how it was possible for them to do it. The Wikipedia link
mentions that there was a disagreement between the editors and Elsevier. How
were the editors able to collectively organize and leave en masse? What can
editorial boards of other journals learn from this?

~~~
Vinnl
There were a number of favourable circumstances. I think the most important
two were that 1) the editorial board had many who considered Open Access to be
important, and 2) it was a relatively small field in which they managed to get
their transition relatively well publicised, which allowed people to submit
their articles there without negatively impacting their career.

Interestingly, I'm working on a blog post right now on what others can learn
from this (because I'm trying to make it happen more often), so if you (or
others reading this) are interested, you can follow along via
[https://tinyletter.com/Flockademic](https://tinyletter.com/Flockademic)

------
nurettin
The insider gossip is that the CEO ordered for access to be kept open.

