[Advocacy Advisors] Fwd: [open-policy-network] Elsevier & Dutch universities in a stand-off

Wed Nov 5 21:36:35 UTC 2014

Hi,

as a little background:
The Dutch government put down a requirement to the universities that they
have to provide open access to their publications, i believe from the top
of my head 60% open access in 5 years, 100% in 10. At the same time, the
universities are renewing their X-year contract with major publishers, and
this is the first time [citation needed] they put together their
negotiating powers and negotiate through their Universities association.
This is the negotiations about access to works published by (in this case)
Elsevier. It seems the discussions got bundled (which makes sense given the
fact that the business model has to change). To me, this feels mostly that
universities are playing it hard, and they simply tell their researchers
now "doom and fail, from 1 january, you can't access Elsevier papers any
more, because they don't meet our demands" which of course gets lots of
press attention, and might help Elsevier to lower their price and
conditions.

I would be highly surprised if Elsevier and the universities would actually
not come to an understanding before the deadline. So yes, the focus is on
publishing and access to Dutch publications by the whole world, but please
note that this is a precondition for re-use. And also, you'll probably have
a hard time to explain the scientist community why their papers should be
reusable... especially with all the plagiarism discussions going on
currently (in the Netherlands and also Germany I think). Lets count our
blessings, and be happy if the Netherlands universities are able to make
good deals and change the business model - that would be a big leap already
I think (most countries are not even close to this, to the best of my
knowledge, although the rumour has it that the UK is going the same way).

Also, to be able to create compendia of free knowledge, /access/ to
publications is the first necessary step of course. Being able to copy and
edit papers would be a nice to have, but that would also first require
being able to see it :)

Finally, this would 'only' be locked down for 5 or 10 years I think,
another cycle, another revolution.

Following these discussions with a lot of interest from closeby,

Lodewijk

On Wed, Nov 5, 2014 at 10:16 PM, Yana Welinder <ywelinder at wikimedia.org>
wrote:

> Interesting development.  Thanks for forwarding, Dimi!  From the press
> release, it sounds like they were focusing of accessibility rather than
> free reuse.  It would be nice to be able to add reuse to the agenda for
> these kind of negotiations, before they reach deadlock of course.
>
> Best,
> Yana
>
> On Wed, Nov 5, 2014 at 1:08 PM, Dimitar Dimitrov <
> dimitar.dimitrov at wikimedia.de> wrote:
>
>> FYI
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: LIBLICENSE <liblicense at gmail.com>
>> Date: Tue, Nov 4, 2014 at 6:11 PM
>> Subject: Elsevier & Dutch universities in a stand-off
>> To: LIBLICENSE-L at listserv.crl.edu
>>
>>
>> From: Jos Damen <josephcmdamen at gmail.com>
>> Date: Tue, Nov 4, 2014 at 11:58 AM
>>
>> "Negotiations between Elsevier and universities failed (PRESS RELEASE
>> VSNU, 4 November 2014)
>>
>> Universities want to move to Open Access publications
>>
>> Negotiations between the Dutch universities and publishing company
>> Elsevier on subscription fees and Open Access have ground to a halt.
>> In line with the policy pursued by the Ministry of Education, Culture
>> and Science, the universities want academic publications to be freely
>> accessible. To that end, agreements will have to be made with the
>> publishers. The proposal presented by Elsevier last week totally fails
>> to address this inevitable change. The universities hope that Elsevier
>> will submit an amended proposal. ‘From now on we will inform our
>> researchers about the consequences of this deadlock’, says Gerard
>> Meijer, president of Radboud University Nijmegen and chief negotiator
>> on behalf of the VSNU."
>>
>> More:
>> http://www.vsnu.nl/news/newsitem/11-negotiations-between-elsevier-and-universities-failed.html
>>
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>>
>> --
>> Dimitar Dimitrov
>> Wikimedian in Brussels
>>
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> Yana Welinder
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> Wikimedia Foundation
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