From: "Bernd-Christoph Kämper (UB)" <
[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2018 14:00:16 +0200
Dear Toby and Liblicense-L readers,
that is correct, but the situation in Sweden is a bit different from
Germany.
In Sweden, the previous contract has been renewed monthwise during the
negotiations, for details cf.
http://openaccess.blogg.kb.se/bibsamkonsortiet/qa-about-the-
cancellation-of-the-agreement-with-elsevier-commencing-1-july/
In Germany, the German Rector's conference had already established an
emergency plan to secure the supply of universities with needed articles on
Dec 1, 2016. There were about 60 institutions whose (multi-year) contract
(either direct, or through regional/other consortia) expired by the end of
2016; for a brief period, they lost access, but in mid February 2017
Elsevier re-instated access for those institutions unilaterally (cf.
https://www.elsevier.com/connect/continued-elsevier-
access-in-support-of-german-science, https://www.nature.com/news/
german-scientists-regain-access-to-elsevier-journals-1.21482). During 2017
further institutions, science organisations and regional consortia
announced that they would not renew their Elsevier contracts and by the end
of 2017 the contracts of 200 Institutions (including the 60 mentioned
above) had expired. Access for all those institutions continued (without
payment) until July 11 when access was finally cut off after DEAL had
declared the break-down of and suspension of the negotiations with the
publisher (for details cf. https://www.projekt-deal.de/,
https://www.projekt-deal.de/informationen/, https://www.projekt-deal.de/
press-review/).
So Institutions in Germany have lost now access to content published since
January 2017 or since January 2016, depending on the expiry date of their
previous contracts.
Also, they have lost access to all previous published content behind
paywalls that is not covered by previous agreements. This differs from
institution to institution.
In Baden-Württemberg, for example, our regional consortium for 2015-2017
had access to over 2000 Elsevier Journals, but perpetual access rights
2015-2017 have been negotiated only for a subset (archival collection) of
about 1100 titles.
There also remain access rights to our local core collections (locally
subscribed titles) until 2014. Also, DFG has funded a national license for
Elsevier Journal Backfiles on ScienceDirect 1907-2002 which however does
not cover all existing backfile collections (cf.
https://www.nationallizenzen.de/angebote/nlproduct.2006-03-10.4713615682).
There is also a lot of Elsevier content that is not behind paywalls, e.g.
for the Cell Press titles, access becomes free 12 months after publication,
and all articles published open access (hybrid or gold).
Counter Usage Statistics for July and August 2018 are not yet available, so
it is too early to give an account of the actual effect that the cutoff had
on our usage.
However, in the first 14 days after Elsevier cut off access to our
university, the announced free (and fast) interlibrary loan service for
Elsevier Articles offered to members of the university (staff and
students), cf. https://www.ub.uni-stuttgart.de/suchen-bestellen/e-
ressourcen/deal.html, was taken up by just 11 persons for just 18 articles.
For comparison, from Nov 2016 to Nov 2017 (12 months; Dec 2017 was an
outlier) we had 535000 fulltext downloads, of which 86.000 were articles
from the current publication year (2017, pre-published 2018, and articles
in press), turnaways were 20.000.
Boingboing https://boingboing.net/2016/12/15/germany-wide-consortium-
of-res.html wrote
"Even so, this kind of boycott was unimaginable until recently -- but the
rise of guerrilla open access sites like Sci-Hub mean that researchers at
participating institutions can continue to access Elsevier papers by other
means." And someone on twitter summarized this as "60 german libraries
announce #Elsevier boycott. Participants will access papers via pirate
libs, like @Sci_Hub WoW!"
Apparently, libraries in Germany enjoy a very revolutionary image ;-) Now,
as highlighted above, we do offer free *and* legal alternatives to access
Elsevier articles, but they seem less popular. Perhaps our users mistake
Sci-hub as short for "Sciencedirect-Hub" and think it's an Elsevier
sponsored service? There is however a range of other perfectly legal routes
for students and academics to quickly get hold of needed articles, as
outlined for example by Björn Brembs in a widely circulated post, "So your
institute went cold turkey on publisher X. What now?" (
http://bjoern.brembs.net/2016/12/so-your-institute-
went-cold-turkey-on-publisher-x-what-now/).
So we do not expect that faculty will start rioting, at least not against
us (although I'd like to see a riot against Elsevier ;-). To the contrary,
16 years ago, at one of those cyclically recurring budget crises, our
university library's faculty advisory board unanimously decided to back our
proposal for a politically motivated "emergency decision" to cancel all of
our Elsevier subscriptions (http://liblicense.crl.edu/
ListArchives/0205/msg00127.html), an Elsevier Boycott that lasted 2 years,
triggered a restructuring of our collection development in general (also
for other publishers) and ultimately led to a new deal for Stuttgart
University on a much lower and more sustainable pricing level. This time,
it's again a political decision, widely backed by faculty, to support the
demand of the German Rector's Conference for a sustainable publish and read
model, which means fair payment for publication and unrestricted
availability for readers afterwards. Also, many prominent scientists that
were on the editorial and advisory boards of Elsevier have resigned in
order to protest against the inacceptable demands of Elsevier and to
support the DEAL negotiations, cf. https://idw-online.de/de/news682623
Bernd-Christoph Kaemper, Stuttgart University Library
Am 09.08.2018 um 23:28 schrieb LIBLICENSE:
From: <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2018 09:12:54 +0000
What the article fails to mention is that researchers still retain access
to all content published prior to the ending of the previous deals (so, in
the case of Bibsam, prior to July 1). So, only very recent articles are not
available.
Toby Green
Public Affairs and Communications Directorate
OECD
On 9 Aug 2018, at 04:26, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: Colin Steele <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2018 00:37:57 +0000
Interesting to see if this European initiative, just documented in the *Times
Higher Education*, flows on to other countries. Best Colin
Times Higher Education <https://www.timeshighereducation.com/>
German and Swedish libraries shrug off Elsevier shutdown
No sign of breakthrough as boycott yet to have significant impact on
publisher
August 8, 2018
· Share on twitter
<https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/german-and-swedish-libraries-shrug-elsevier-shutdown&via=timeshighered&text=German%20and%20Swedish%20libraries%20shrug%20off%20Elsevier%20shutdown>
- By David Matthews
<https://www.timeshighereducation.com/author/david-matthews>
High price: in Germany, talks over a new national contract with Elsevier
broke down because of concerns over rising costs
Losing access to new content from the world’s biggest academic publisher
might sound like a nightmare for university libraries.
But, a month after being cut off from new Elsevier articles, librarians in
Sweden have reported only a handful of complaints, while in Germany,
institutions said that they have had to deal with relatively few requests
for blocked papers.
<image001.jpg>
<https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/talks-collapse-germany-rejects-unacceptable-elsevier-offer>
Talks collapse as Germany rejects ‘unacceptable’ Elsevier offer
<https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/talks-collapse-germany-rejects-unacceptable-elsevier-offer>
*Read more*
<https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/talks-collapse-germany-rejects-unacceptable-elsevier-offer>
The two countries are being watched closely by librarians in other
countries to see how feasible it is to ditch big publishers, either
permanently or as part of a contract-negotiating strategy, as they push for
periodicals to move towards an open access model. It is one of the first
big tests of university resilience in the face of no access – Elsevier had
previously stopped short
<https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/will-other-countries-follow-germany-battle-elsevier>
of cutting off Germany.
In Sweden, libraries have been without access to content published since 30
June after the country’s university negotiating consortium decided in May
<http://forskningsrelaterat.hb.se/2018/05/16/bibsam-takes-a-stand-for-open-access-cancels-elsevier-deal/?lang=en>
to end its contract with Elsevier because of rising costs and what it saw
as an insufficient offer on open access.
In Germany, meanwhile, talks over a new national contract that had dragged
on unsuccessfully for more than a year and a half broke down
<https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/talks-collapse-germany-rejects-unacceptable-elsevier-offer>
last
month over similar issues, and libraries have been without access to new
material since 10 July.
Demand for articles is relatively low during the summer holidays, while
librarians arguably have an incentive to downplay any problems to
strengthen their negotiating hand, and pressure on libraries could grow as
an ever greater proportion of Elsevier material becomes unavailable.
But so far, Swedish librarians surveyed by *Times Higher Education *have
reported a handful of complaints, at most.
“Up until now, three researchers have made complaints [that I am aware
of],” said Jakob Harnesk, library director at Karlstad University
<https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/karlstad-university>.
“Researchers that express support for the cancellation by far outnumber the
negative ones.”
One library head, who preferred to remain anonymous, said that they had
received one call from a researcher concerned about not being able to
access new issues of a specific journal. “The rest of the very few comments
we have got have been supportive,” they said.
Swedish libraries are able to get around the blockage through inter-library
loans – borrowing papers from libraries that still have access, for example
those abroad. “So long as inter-library loan is an option, I see no
problem,” said David Lawrence, director of Linköping University
<https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/linkoping-university>
library.
Wilhelm Widmark, director of Stockholm University
<https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/stockholm-university>
library, said that he had not yet received many requests for loans, and
suspected instead that scholars were sharing articles. “We haven't had any
complaints yet,” he said. “We have only received some feedback from
researchers who support our cancellation.”
------------------------------
In Germany, Bernhard Mittermaier, a member of the negotiating team for
Project Deal, the country’s national negotiating consortium, said that,
judging by a recent internal survey of about 30 institutions, there are on
the whole “no complaints and no reactions” to the lack of content.
In the weeks since new content has been unavailable, German institutions on
average have had to request 20 papers on loan from other libraries, he
said. “That’s no problem at all,” he said. “This can be done by the
director of the library in the evening, from the sofa”.
Each loan costs €6 (£5.34), he said – an expense dwarfed by the savings
that libraries were making by not subscribing to Elsevier journals.
Depending on their size, some libraries had been paying up to €800,000 a
year for Elsevier content, he said; they now therefore had a lot more money
in their budgets and some were now investing this saving into open access
publishing instead.
But, if Germany and Sweden are not under any immediate pressure to seek a
deal, neither seemingly is Elsevier. The share price of its parent company,
RELX, rose during July, and in the last week of the month it posted results
for the first half of 2018 that reassured analysts
<http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/201629/relxs-first-half-results-ease-concerns-over-german-and-swedish-universities-dispute-201629.html>
that the dispute in Germany and Sweden had not slowed revenue growth. Until
it cut off access in July, the publisher had in effect been providing free
access
<https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/will-other-countries-follow-germany-battle-elsevier>
to more than 200 German institutions since the beginning of 2018.
The German strategy is still to wait for the pressure to build on Elsevier
and ultimately strike a new deal with them, rather than make the current
state of affairs permanent, said Dr Mittermaier. He did acknowledge that
there was a “risk” that some libraries, happy with the savings that they
were currently making, would decide not to join any new national deal.
But German researchers were stepping up pressure in other ways, by
declining to submit articles, conduct peer review and stepping down from
the editorial boards of journals, he added.
An Elsevier spokeswoman said: “Trends in access requests show nothing
unusual in Germany and Sweden. Trends in paper submissions are not
discernible after such a short period of time.
“We remain open to constructive talks to find a sustainable national
solution in both Germany and Sweden.”
---------------------------------------------
Colin Steele
Emeritus Fellow
ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences
The Australian National University
Room 3.31, Beryl Rawson Building #13
Acton, ACT, 2601
Australia
P: + 61 2 6125 8983
E: [log in to unmask]
|
