Elsevier journals are available again
OVGU has joined the nationwide DEAL agreement with the academic publisher Elsevier. This means that members of the university have had access to a large part of Elsevier's electronic journal portfolio since January 1, 2024. They will also be able to publish specialist articles as open access as a corresponding author under the agreement at no additional cost. Thanks to the Open Access Fund (excluding FME), this also applies to first publications in Gold journals. More than two thirds of all publications with OVGU members as "corresponding author" were already freely available worldwide in 2022, i.e. published as open access. The University Library supports this through transformative contracts with publishers such as ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), ACS (American Chemical Society), Springer Nature and Wiley. In the past three years, Elsevier has been one of the top 3 publishers with which OVGU researchers have publishe.
"The Elsevier-DEAL contract will once again significantly increase the proportion of open access," says Deputy Library Director Dr. Christine Lücke. "The contract is of great importance to us. The negotiations with Elsevier have dragged on for a very long time. Since 2017, users of the University Library have not had comprehensive access to Elsevier publications. This was a considerable restriction for our academics. They repeatedly asked us to provide access to journals and journal articles from Elsevier. We at the University Library are therefore all the more pleased to be able to expand our services for researchers." The idea of open access is very firmly anchored in the University Library. Wherever possible, the University Library enters into transformative agreements to enable worldwide free access to research articles by OVGU academics.
The background
Ten years ago, the German Rectors' Conference initiated the DEAL project, now known as the DEAL Consortium. It deals with the negotiation, conclusion and practical implementation of Germany-wide transformative open access agreements with academic publishers. The aims of these agreements are to enable scientists in Germany to publish open access in order to achieve greater visibility and reach for their research results, and to improve access to research literature that is not freely available. In addition, the costs of scientific publishing are to be contained and a sustainable remuneration model established.
Read more about Open Access publishing on the University Library website.