Criticism of the DEAL project indicates that it focuses only on the largest publishers and would therefore encourage authors to publish open access exclusively with the two largest publishers with whom there are agreements. In this case, the DEAL project would therefore put smaller, opener publishers at a competitive disadvantage and have the potential to undermine the long queue of full (golden) open-access publishers, the would compromise fair competition between publishers. OASPA: The consortium`s decision is remarkable, as other major European consortia have recently taken the opposite direction. The consortia of Germany, Sweden and Norway have all terminated their «great agreements» with Elsevier. In the United States, the University of California system has recently moved away from the publishing house after its lack of agreement. In 2002, dissatisfaction with Elsevier`s pricing policy led the European Economic Association to denounce an agreement with Elsevier, which made elsevier`s European Economic Study the official review of the association. The EEA has launched a new journal, the Journal of the European Economic Association. [88] According to Widmark, the annual payment to Elsevier under this new three-year contract will be roughly equivalent to what the consortium previously paid with reading-only licenses. (The exact costs will be published in line with the contract as soon as the member institutions have completed their membership decisions.) On December 19, 2018, Max Planck (MPS) announced that the existing subscription contract with Elsevier would not be renewed when December 31, 2018 expires. MPS has 14,000 scientists in 84 research institutes and publishes 12,000 articles a year. [141] [142] The Bibsam Agreement includes unlimited open-access «Gold» publications – in which an article is made freely available immediately after publication on the website of a publishing house – in almost all Elsevier magazines. However, this excludes hybrid magazines (which contain both open access and paywalled content) in the Lancet collection and limits the publication of open access in Cell Press hybrid magazines to 100 publications per year for the entire consortium.
The agreement also includes the ability to read paywalled content in almost all Elsevier magazines, with the exception of Cell Press titles, which universities must purchase for a fee. With this agreement, French universities and research institutes have access to the publisher`s «Freedom complete edition» program, to which z.B. The Lancet and Cell Press. However, the consortium does not guarantee that all its members comply with the national licence. Elsevier`s licensing agreements differ with respect to paywalled newspapers that members can access and where they can publish open access articles at no additional cost. «Each agreement is unique because each customer is unique and its requirements and circumstances are very specific,» says an email from Elsevier. Couperin, the French university consortium for higher education and research, and Elsevier, a global information analysis company specializing in science and health, have signed a new national licensing agreement.
