What is Open Access?
Open access (OA) refers to a publishing and distribution model for scholarly communication that makes research information available to readers online at no cost, rather than the traditional model of charging readers for access.
A key motivation for the development of the OA concept was that scholarly literature should be publicly available on the Internet free of charge, so that anyone interested can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, link to, and use full texts in any other conceivable legal way, without encountering financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those associated with Internet access itself.
The Max Planck Society is one of the founders of the international Open Access movement. The publication of the "Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities" on October 22, 2003 and the subsequent annual conferences initiated a process that has raised awareness of the issue of access to scientific information. 2023 thus marks the 20th anniversary of the publication of the Berlin Declaration.
Achievements of the First DEAL Agreement Phase
Between 2019 and 2023, more than 105,000 publications from German scientific institutions were published under the DEAL agreements, 97 percent of which are Open Access.
In a new publication, the German-wide DEAL consortium presents the key achievements of its first contract phase with the publishers Wiley and Springer Nature. The newly published infographic brochure provides a comprehensive insight into the background, objectives and results of the DEAL initiative.
Since the start of the first contract phase in 2019, DEAL has made great progress in the area of open access publishing and the provision of scientific information to German institutions. The brochure provides detailed key figures and developments over the last four to five years to show how the DEAL contracts have successfully achieved the consortium's objectives.
The brochure also highlights how DEAL has expanded reading opportunities for participating institutions while reducing the overall cost of scientific publications. This is a major breakthrough in the face of ever-increasing expenditure on scientific journals.
With over 500 participating institutions, DEAL has become a strong community and an important infrastructure in the German academic and library landscape. The review of the first phase of the contract highlights not only its considerable achievements, but also DEAL's contribution to promoting the visibility and reach of German research worldwide and to shaping a more sustainable scholarly publishing system.
DEAL contracts entered into force
Institutions that together are responsible for about 90% of the total number of publications from Germany in the journals of the publishers Elsevier, Springer Nature and Wiley based on the figures for 2022 are participating in the contracts.
Collectively, the DEAL agreements have the potential to shift around half of German research output in scientific journals to Open Access every year over the next five years. This will make research results from Germany immediately freely available, accessible free of charge worldwide and re-usable. It will also give hundreds of institutions in the country, and their researchers and students, maximum access to publishing platforms and content that is not yet openly accessible.
The DEAL agreement with Elsevier was subject to a 70% participation rate. The impressive participation rate of 90% means that a further contractual agreement will now come into effect: a 2% reduction in the agreed publish and read fee. This means that the fee for the first year of the contract will be €2,500 instead of €2,550.
Institutions that have not yet signed up can do so at any time during the five-year contract.
