The Thieme Group has signed a transformation agreement with ZB MED – Information Centre for Life Sciences, the Forschungszentrum Jülich, and thirteen additional specialist libraries. As part of an initial pilot project, authors at participating institutions will first be given the opportunity to publish original papers in Hormone and Metabolic Research, an international journal published by Thieme, on an open access basis at no extra cost. The license fee paid by libraries to the publisher for access to the journal is increasingly being converted into a publication fee on the basis of the five-year contract. The German Research Foundation (DFG) is funding the project as part of the Licences for Digital Content programme, which will potentially also include other titles.
Appropriate business models for open access are currently being discussed in detail and a number of wide-ranging agreements have already been reached. The Thieme Group’s current contract with the fifteen members of the potentially expandable library consortium sets forth the gradual transformation of an existing subscription model to open-access financing.
Under the new business model, ZB MED, the Forschungszentrum Jülich, and the thirteen other specialist libraries pay a fee to access Hormone and Metabolic Research based on a license for reading access and a publication fee to allow open access publishing by authors attached to these institutions. There is no limit on the number of open access publications this could be extended to. Those involved specifically selected the journal as a suitable pilot. The journal covers a very research-intensive field in which German scientists and researchers are known to publish extensively. Around half-way through the term of the contract, the partners will together review their experiences with open access submissions. Step-by-step, the licensing fee will be transformed into a publication fee.
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