{"id":616,"date":"2021-02-21T10:49:26","date_gmt":"2021-02-21T09:49:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ifla.org\/arl\/?p=616"},"modified":"2021-02-21T10:52:20","modified_gmt":"2021-02-21T09:52:20","slug":"elsevier-agreement-in-denmark-just-one-step-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ifla.org\/arl\/2021\/02\/21\/elsevier-agreement-in-denmark-just-one-step-forward\/","title":{"rendered":"Elsevier agreement in Denmark: (just) one step forward"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>During the last few months intense negotiations have <\/span>taken place<\/span> between Danish universities and publishing giant Elsevier. The topic was <\/span>of course <\/span>license agreements<\/span> and<\/span> Open Access<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

On <\/span>January 26 it was announced that Danish universities had entered into a new license agreement for the coming <\/span>four <\/span>years, which <\/span>mean<\/span>s<\/span> that Danish researchers <\/span>c<\/span>an<\/span> breathe <\/span>a sigh of relief, at least for now.<\/span><\/p>\n

The main points of the agreement are:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 <\/span>The price of journal subscriptions remains the same for the entire period. <\/span>It is based on the 2020 price.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u2022 <\/span>The parties mentioned in the agreement have full, unaltered access to 75% of the Elsevier Freedom Collection (this used to be 100%).<\/span><\/div>\n
\u2022 <\/span>Free Open Access publishing of the final Elsevier version of an article, with a Creative Commons BY license, when the author is corresponding author and affiliated with an institution that is a <\/span>part of<\/span> the agreement. However, several hundred Gold Open Access Elsevier journals and a list of about 170 titles under the licenses (not yet specified) are not part of this contract.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u2022 <\/span>A price increase of 1<\/span>,12<\/span>% on other Elsevier resources, such as Scopus, for all institutions.<\/span><\/div>\n

For one of the universities under the agreement, The University of Southern Denmark, this means that about 1.2 mill<\/span>ion<\/span> Euro<\/span>s<\/span>, or about 26% of the library budget for electronic materials, will be reserved to Elsevier in 2021. The funding is distributed with around 1 mil<\/span>lion<\/span> Euro<\/span>s<\/span> paid for subscription to the journal package \u201cFreedom Collection\u201d. In addition, the library subscribes to other resources outside the current agreement: e.g. the reference data<\/span> base Scopus, the <\/span>bibliometric<\/span> data<\/span> base<\/span> SciVal<\/span>, various individual journals and digital reference works, and the software <\/span>underlying<\/span> the research registration system, PURE.<\/span><\/p>\n

The University Library of Southern Denmark has also been paying around 100.000 Euro annually for <\/span>article processing charges (<\/span>APCs<\/span>)<\/span> for <\/span>O<\/span>pen <\/span>A<\/span>ccess publishing, <\/span>which meant that <\/span>the university\u2019s <\/span>budget <\/span>had all <\/span>been <\/span>fully <\/span>spent <\/span>before<\/span> yet another agreement. Previous agreements with Elsevier have brought annual price increases of 3-5%.<\/span><\/p>\n

Therefore, <\/span>the<\/span> good news <\/span>is <\/span>that this part of the universities\u2019 contract with Elsevier has now been settled.<\/span><\/p>\n

Remaining issues include the <\/span>following: <\/span><\/p>\n

– <\/span>the<\/span> agreement only <\/span>covers<\/span> the Freedom Collection<\/span>;<\/span><\/p>\n

– <\/span>the <\/span>limitation to \u201ccorresponding author\u201d has a unknown impact on the national Danish Open Access strategy and library <\/span>services related to Open Access<\/span>;<\/span><\/div>\n
– <\/span>Elsevier still denies Open Access to almost 800 journals<\/span>; <\/span><\/div>\n
– <\/span>and<\/span> the library<\/span> will only have perpetual<\/span> access to 75<\/span>%<\/span> of Elsevier\u2019s journals – in terms of the journals \u201cvalue\u201d<\/span>; i<\/span>t is not<\/span>yet <\/span>clear<\/span> which journals <\/span>this pertains too<\/span>, as i<\/span>t depends on the price of the individual journals<\/span>, as set by Elsevier<\/span>.<\/span><\/div>\n

However, the agreement should be seen as the first step <\/span>in the right direction, <\/span>which we hope will lead to <\/span>more <\/span>reasonable agreements between Danish universities and large publishers like Elsevier.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nationally<\/span> and<\/span> i<\/span>nternationall, library budgets are still under huge pressure from price increases on licenses, by far exceed<\/span>ing<\/span> the increases in public funding. Therefor <\/span>libraries <\/span>still experience a massive economic pressure and must still face <\/span>the need to <\/span>cancel subscriptions and <\/span>reduce <\/span>library<\/span> services, <\/span>in order<\/span> to <\/span>balance their budgets<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

So even though the new agreement with Elsevier in Denmark is no doubt an improvement, the current subscription-based scholarly publishing <\/span>model <\/span>does by <\/span>its nature not <\/span>present a <\/span>sustainable <\/span>future for research libraries: <\/span>true <\/span>transformative agreements are still ahead. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Bertil<\/span> Fabricius<\/span> Dorch<\/span><\/p>\n

Library Director<\/span>, Associate Professor<\/span><\/p>\n

University Library of Southern Denmark<\/span>, SDU<\/span><\/p>\n

Denmark<\/span><\/p>\n

Email: <\/span>bfd@bib.sdu.dk<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

References<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Press release from Universities Denmark: <\/span><\/p>\n

https:\/\/dkuni.dk\/pressemeddelelser\/denmark-enters-agreement-on-open-access-with-major-publisher\/<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

News from University of Southern Denmark:<\/span><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.sdu.dk\/en\/bibliotek\/om+biblioteket\/nyheder\/<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

ket\/nyheder\/elsevier<\/span><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During the last few months intense negotiations have taken place between Danish universities and publishing giant Elsevier. The topic was of course license agreements and Open Access. On January 26 it was announced that Danish universities had entered into a new license agreement for the coming four years, which means that Danish researchers can breathe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1022,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9695,20999,192],"tags":[20999,192],"class_list":["post-616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-and-research-libraries","category-denmark","category-open-access","tag-denmark","tag-open-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ifla.org\/arl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ifla.org\/arl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ifla.org\/arl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ifla.org\/arl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1022"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ifla.org\/arl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ifla.org\/arl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":622,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ifla.org\/arl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616\/revisions\/622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ifla.org\/arl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ifla.org\/arl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ifla.org\/arl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}