Upon invitation by Horst Hippler, president of the HRK, a high-level summit meeting was held yesterday in Berlin in the presence of Robert-Jan Smits, the recently appointed Open Access envoy of the EU.
Teams of university presidents, funding organisations and librarians that are involved in the ongoing independent negotiations with the major publishers (Elsevier, SpringerNature, Wiley) in the various countries, exchanged their experiences. Policies and concrete actions to accelerate the transition from the current, subscription-based publication system, to a complete open access “Publish and Read” system were discussed.
The participants agreed on aligning their strategies and striving for optimum transparency on the procedure and outcome of the negotiations.
“We see that the transition to open access is too slow, and I am utterly upset and concerned about this” Professor Hippler said. “It was broadly echoed in the meeting, that the limits of partnership of academic institutions with these large publishers have been reached.”
