French research organisations and universities have reportedly cancelled their subscriptions to Springer journals. The move is the result of an impasse in fee negotiations between the publisher and Couperin.org, a national consortium representing over 250 academic institutions in France.
After more than a year of negotiations, Couperin.org and SpringerNature have failed to reach an agreement on subscriptions for Springer journals. SpringerNature publishes over 2,000 scholarly journals belonging to Springer, Nature, and BioMedCentral. The publisher's proposal includes a rise in price, which the consortium has refused to accept.
Couperin.org and its members' access to Springer journals ended March 31, 2018. According to a SpringerNature spokesperson, the publisher will continue to provide French institutions with access to its journals while talks continue. The spokesperson notes that as requested by Couperin, SpringerNature is considering a further proposal and during this time access will remain open.
According to a statement published by Couperin.org on March 30, the consortium was pushing for a reduction in subscription costs to account for the increasing proportion of open-access articles-for which authors pay an article processing fee to publish-in Springer's journals. The continuous increase in the share of articles published as open access makes it difficult to maintain a policy of increasing subscription costs, they write. On the contrary, it justifies Couperin.org's request for a price reduction.
The French impasse is the latest in a series of disputes between publishers and universities. Recently, around 200 institutions terminated their Elsevier subscriptions in Germany, in order to put pressure on the publisher during ongoing negotiations for a new nationwide licensing agreement. Discussions between Elsevier and Project Deal, an alliance of German universities and research institutions, have made little process since they began in 2016.
Subscription negotiations between library consortia and Elsevier in Finland and South Korea had also become heated. The publisher, however, reached an agreement in these countries in the last few months.
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