MPDL Services is pleased to announce further milestones for the DEAL consortium. The required participation rates for the continuation of the new main contracts with Springer Nature and Wiley have not only been met but exceeded through binding participation agreements.
The combination of formally concluded participation agreements and informal commitments shows that, as of 16 February 2024, the participation rates for both publishers are expected to be more than 90%, i.e. institutions which, together, are responsible for more than 90% of the total number of publications from Germany in the journals of these publishers, based on the figures for 2022, are now participating in the agreements.
Together with the DEAL agreement with Elsevier, for which a similarly high rate has been achieved, the DEAL agreements have the potential to make around half of the German research output in scientific journals open access every year over the next five years. This will make research results from Germany immediately freely available, accessible free of charge worldwide and re-usable. It will also give hundreds of institutions in the country, and their researchers and students, maximum access to publishing platforms and content that is not yet openly accessible.
In the coming days, the MPDLS support team, which has been managing three parallel participation processes involving hundreds of institutions for months, will be finalising numerous processes and clarifying queries. Institutions that have already participated in the old contracts and whose participation process for the new contracts has not yet been completed can use DEAL services as usual during the transition period. Springer Nature has extended the deadline for this until the end of the transition period on 29 February.
Participation is possible at any time during the entire contract period until the end of 2028. All information on how to participate is available at https://deal-konsortium.de/einrichtungen/teilnehmen.