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2024-01-17
  • DEAL
  • E-Media
  • Open Access

Continuation of the DEAL agreements with Wiley and Springer Nature – new DEAL agreement with Elsevier

The University of Freiburg participates in the second phase of the transformative agreements with Wiley and Springer Nature, which have been in place since 2019 and 2020 respectively. From January 1, 2024, a new DEAL agreement with Elsevier will significantly expand publication opportunities and reading access.

The aim of Projekt DEAL, which was launched in 2014, was to facilitate open access publishing for researchers in Germany by negotiating and concluding nationwide agreements with the three leading international academic publishers Elsevier, Springer Nature and Wiley, thereby increasing the visibility and impact of their results. In addition, reading access to the publishers' journal portfolios should be improved and guaranteed in the long term through the purchase of archive rights.

The University of Freiburg participated in the transformative agreements with the publishers Wiley and Springer Nature resulting from the DEAL negotiations from the outset. These will now be renewed in a second contractual period for the years 2024 to 2028. This means that Open Access-related costs arising from the publication of authorised articles by members of the university in over 1,900 Wiley journals and more than 2,500 Springer Nature journals will continue to be billed centrally via the University Library. As a participating institution, the University of Freiburg also receives reading access to almost all journal content on the publishers' online platforms.

A third transformative DEAL agreement with the academic publisher Elsevier will be added for the University of Freiburg with effect from January 1, 2024. Throughout the agreed term until 2028, Freiburg Authors who publish their work as Submitting Corresponding Authors in more than 1,800 hybrid and over 650 gold open access journals by Elsevier will no longer have to pay publication fees. This also includes the journals of the Cell Press and The Lancet brands. Thanks to the reading access that has also been agreed upon, almost the entire collection of Elsevier titles will be available again in Freiburg after several years of interruption. The contract also includes an option to guarantee perpetual access rights to Elsevier content until 2022. An application has been submitted to the DFG to finance the one-off payment required for this, and a decision on its approval is expected to be made at the end of March or beginning of April 2024.

If you have any questions about open access publishing and the University of Freiburg’s Publication Fund, please contact us at openaccess@ub.uni-freiburg.de. You can also find information on the conditions for publication funding under the DEAL agreements on our website.