Several European countries are now rejecting the price hikes that publishers like Elsevier have introduced in recent years.
Swedish researchers have to search in vain in their libraries these days for e-resources from the publishing giant Elsevier. The Swedish universities have withdrawn from negotiations with Elsevier after the substantial increases in subscription fees to their products, which the publisher has levied year after year. The result has been that 85 Swedish research institutions have been without access to Elsevier journals since July 1.
France and Germany have also pushed back against the price hikes. In France, a substantial sum has been allocated towards developing a system that bypasses the major legacy publishers. Negotiations are still underway in Germany, but researchers there have withdrawn from tasks like peer reviewing for journals in the Elsevier stable until an agreement is reached.
This is not likely to happen here. Denmark’s Electronic Research Library, which manages the subscriptions on behalf of the Danish research libraries, is currently in negotiations with Elsevier for the period starting in 2019.
The negotiations will hopefully result in a new agreement between the Danish research libraries and Elsevier, ensuring that researchers and students from CBS will continue to have access to resources from Elsevier. If a new agreement is reached, however, it will almost certainly be more expensive for the Danish universities than the current one.
In Denmark, we’re taking a long view of the problem. The publishers’ monopolies and aggressive pricing strategies are being addressed, for example, by the introduction of a national open access strategy, which is to culminate in 2025, when there is to be free access to all publications from Danish universities, thereby ensuring that researchers at least have access to Danish publications.
If you have any questions about this, please contact Birgit Brejnebøl