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Projekt DEAL: a new way to do open access
Patricia Knörrer John Wiley & Sons Publishing, Germany
The last year has seen an intensification of discussions about the transition to open-access publishing, particularly in Europe. This article is about the model for transformation that has been agreed between Projekt DEAL, which represents the German research community, and the Wiley publishing house – a model that could be applied to other countries in Europe as well. In 2018, a consortium of national research agencies called cOAlition S made the pledge that by 2021, state-funded research should be published in open-access journals or made available in open repositories. This movement, called ‘Plan S’, is motivated by the principle that science should not be exclusive, and that locking scientific research behind a paywall directly contradicts the ethos that science must be open to scrutiny and challenge in order to be valid. Plan S is a dramatic change for the way publishing is handled and many publishers and learned societies are having to come up with innovative ways to manage their journals and support the move towards Open Access. Projekt DEAL is an initiative commissioned by the Alliance of Science Organisations in Germany (‘Allianz der Wissenschaftsorganisationen’) to create a consortium to represent all research institutes and academic libraries in negotiations for nationwide agreements with publishing
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microbiologist
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December 2020
houses. As such, Projekt DEAL represents about 700 academic institutions in Germany, such as universities, universities of applied science (Fachhochschulen), research institutions, state and regional libraries, and major science and research organisations in Germany including the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, German Academic Exchange Service, German Research Foundation (DFG), Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Helmholtz Association, German Rectors’ Conference (HRK), Leibniz Association, Max Planck Society and the German Science Council (Wissenschaftsrat). The initiative represents fundamental support for transition to Open Access that goes to the heart of the structures that support and govern German research. In January 2019, negotiations between Wiley and Projekt DEAL came to a successful conclusion in the signing of a contract with two main components. Firstly, the payment
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