You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
RE: Project DEAL about to achieve 2/3rds of its goal - a better future for scientific publishing
This is great, although it only affects Germany?
The current publishing model is highly, highly flawed. Scientists do experiments, write papers, pay open access fees in some cases, then get peer reviewed by other scientists (who work for free, or at least without cost to publishers), only to have to pay to see their own research on a journal website. All while the publisher rakes in the profits.
It will be interesting to see how Elsevier responds to Germany's hardball tactics.
Hey @donkeykong9000,
project DEAL is an initiative from Germany, so for now, only Germany. The Netherlands already negotiated something alike, although they did not get a very good deal, the publishers used loopholes to give them less than they thought they paid for! Finland is in preparation of a similar project and I think all other European countries are watching. Even more important for DEAL to achieve their goals, hopefully this will make the work of the others easier!
For the pressure aspect, I think Germany wields a decent amount of power. With a certain influence on other European countries, this could easily evolve into an European boycott... But this is speculation! ;)