Dutch Universities Dig In For Long Fight Over Open Access

Institutions ‘unbending’ on fee-free demand as talks with Elsevier resume

Dutch universities have vowed not to soften their groundbreaking demands for publishers to permit all papers published by their academics to be made open access for no extra charge.  In January last year, Sander Dekker, the Dutch minister for education, culture and science, decreed that 60 per cent of Dutch research articles must be open access by 2019 and 100 per cent by 2024. Dutch university presidents responded by agreeing to make their renewal of subscription deals dependent on publishers taking steps to realise this goal.

Gerard Meijer, president of Radboud University and one of the lead negotiators for the Dutch universities, said that in addition to preserving access to their subscription journals, the universities wanted publishers to permit all future articles whose corresponding author has a Dutch affiliation to be published on an open access basis for no extra charge. He said universities were also unwilling to tolerate any more above-inflation price rises.

A deal that meets the universities’ requirements was recently made with Springer, the world’s second-largest science journal publisher. Professor Meijer said this showed that the transition to a fully open access business model could be made by traditional publishers..