Beware of opt-outs - How researchers avoid disadvantages in publications

Opting out of Open Access - what does that mean?

Opting out means that authors transfer exclusive rights to the publisher. This restricts them in terms of the further use of their work. The publication is then only visible worldwide to those who pay for it individually or have access to a subscription to the journal in question. What's more, opting out does not reduce costs for the university.

Also the University of Kassel participates in the DEAL contracts and thus enables you not only to access almost all e-journals of Wiley and Springer Nature but also to publish your articles in Open Access without own costs, and not only in the pure Gold Open Access journals of both publishers.

What are the benefits of the Open Access option?

After your paper has been accepted in a traditional subscription journal, you will be notified in the author dashboards of the option to release your article for free (under the designations OnlineOpen at Wiley and Open Choice at Springer Nature). But why should you, as an author:in, use this so-called hybrid open access in DEAL journals at all? After all, the scientific community knows how to get access to your article anyway.

That's true! But wouldn't it be better if scientific research results, which in most cases are published without any commercial interest on the part of the author, were available free of charge to everyone, whether scientist or layperson, member of a university or private person? How does the scientific community get hold of the article? Either your own university has purchased an expensive license or you pay for one-time access to the article. Or you post it on ResearchGate or Academia.edu, which publishers often tolerate, but strictly speaking is not allowed due to the ceded exploitation right. Or they contact you directly as the author and ask you to send them the article. Or one uses illegal shadow libraries. All of this is either expensive, takes place in a legal gray area, or is clearly illegal, or is inconvenient. Open Access, on the other hand, allows your article to be freely available worldwide at any time without barriers. In DEAL, your open access article is published under a Creative Commons license, which not only allows for better dissemination and reuse. You, as the author:in, retain the rights to your article and can re-use it yourself in any way you wish. So why lock away research results that have been funded by taxpayers through state or third-party funds behind a paywall?

What is behind the idea of DEAL?

The national DEAL contracts were negotiated on behalf of the Alliance of German Science Organizations with Wiley, Springer Nature and Elsevier (although no agreement has yet been reached with Elsevier ), because these three publishers publish a significant part of the scientific output, but at the same time (like many other publishers) demand ever higher license fees. This is not financially viable in the long term. So far, however, it has not been possible to convince scientists on a large scale to publish more in purely OA journals. One reason is the current scientific and publication system, in which researchers who want to make a career depend on publications in renowned journals of the major publishers. The DEAL agreements (and similar agreements in other countries) are an attempt to increase the OA share of these publishers and to transform their journals into pure OA journals in the medium term (keyword: OA transformation). In other words, if the scientists do not come to OA, OA must come to them, or to the journals in which they continue to publish. The aim is to ensure that as many articles as possible by authors from German institutions appear in open access at these publishers, and at the same time that all participating institutions have access to their closed-access content. So we are not only participating in the DEAL contracts so that you can publish Open Access, but also so that the University of Kassel continues to have access to the journals of Wiley and Springer Nature.

A new billing model

There is another reason not to let the Open Access option in DEAL go unused: it is already paid for. Wait a minute. UB pays Wiley and Springer Nature a fee for every article that members of the University of Kassel publish in their subscription journals? Even if the authors do not use Open Access at all?

That's exactly how it is! The billing model of the DEAL contracts is no longer subscription-based, but publication-based. For each article that members of German institutions publish in the DEAL journals, the publishers receive a so-called publish &read fee of EUR 2,750 net. Of course, the publishers have calculated that with the expected number of articles from Germany, they will generate the same revenue as before with subscriptions from German institutions. That's why we also have to pay for articles for which the authors decide against Open Access. Otherwise, we would get the content from DEAL publishers for free if no one used Open Access (which contradicts the intention of DEAL). It is obvious that this cannot work. That's why we pay for every article, Open Access or not.

The consequence of the new billing model is that institutions with strong publications have increasing costs and institutions with weaker publications have decreasing costs. So there is a reallocation of fees between institutions, but the total revenue of publishers across Germany remains approximately the same. Thus, Germany gets much more OA and thus more output for the same money. Of course, this model leads to intense discussions between institutions and considerations on how to make this cost transformation sustainable and affordable for all. For example, the DFG has set up a corresponding funding program.

Conclusion:

DEAL is one of several approaches to achieving more open access. The way to get there is controversial and under constant discussion, but one thing is certain: the current model with ever-increasing subscription costs is not sustainable, is reaching its limits, and is hindering free scientific exchange on fair terms. The success of DEAL contracts as a building block for sustainable publishing can only be judged later. Appeals to the scientific community to publish more in purely OA journals have unfortunately not yet had the desired success, despite all the insight into the problem, due to system-immanent aspects, one must almost say undesirable developments in the scientific publishing system (focus on impact factor, publish or perish).

So: Use the option to publish your articles at Wiley and Springer Nature in Open Access, and consider pure Open Access journals of your discipline. You can find them in the Directory of Open Access Journals. Be part of the change.

For more information about DEAL, visit DEAL Operations. If you have any questions about DEAL and Open Access, we look forward to hearing from you.

Text: Dr. Tobias Pohlmann

Contact:
Dr. Tobias Pohlmann
openaccess[at]bibliothek.uni-kassel[dot]de
0561 804 2529

Links:
Open Access publishing with DEAL
Project DEAL
Directory of Open Access Journals
Open Access at the UB Kassel