No agreement between Dutch universities and Oxford University Press
The association of Dutch universities that make up the VSNU has been unable to reach an agreement with Oxford University Press (OUP) regarding access to its published scientific papers. The bottleneck lies in the so-called ‘open access’ to articles.
The idea of the open access is that universities pay a fee to academic publishers like OUP which, in return, make the information freely accessible. A recent offer from OUP to the VSNU was, however, rejected. In a press release the VSNU states: ‘We do not consider the proposal OUP made to be feasible.’ The details of the proposal were not published.
New standard
According to the VSNU, the proposal ‘is a setback when viewed in the context of the deals VSNU has made with other publishers in order to reach its target of 100% open access by the year 2020’. Jaap Winter, president of the executive board of the Free University (VU) and main negotiator of the VSNU said: ‘Of course publishers have the choice to opt out of the ideals of open access. However, open access will become the new standard, with or without them.’
The VSNU negotiates the contracts over subscription fees for scientific papers with scientific publishers on behalf of all the Dutch universities. Increasingly, the universities only want to extend these contracts under the condition that publishers make more papers available via open access, something the VSNU does not believe OUP has done enough of.
Medical
OUP is specialised in medical papers. In a press release published in support of the negotiation strategy of the VSNU, the Dutch Federation of University Medical Centres (NFU) said: ‘As long as there is no agreement, as of 1 May scientists will no longer seek access to OUP published through its site but via alternatives.’
