Together Again: Springer, Max Planck Agree To New “Experimental” Deal
After a highly-publicized split last October, Springer announced this week that it has won back a key subscriber, Germany’s prestigious Max Planck Institute (MPS), with an innovative two-year deal that features Springer’s open access (OA) option. The new agreement, signed last week, was billed as a “mix” of open access and subscription models under which Max Planck researchers will have access to all 1200 Springer journals in SpringerLink as well as having author charges waived for researchers choosing to publish in journals under Springer’ OA option, Open Choice. Financial details, however, were not disclosed.
Though billed as “a two-year experiment,” the new deal represents a significant reconnection for Springer, a leading STM publisher, and the well-funded Max Planck, one of the world’s most prestigious research institutions with more than 12,000 staff members, 9000 Ph.D. students, post-docs, guest scientists and researchers, and student assistants working in over 80 affiliated research institutes. The agreement, however, was billed as “a two-year experiment.” Over the duration of the deal, noted Peter Hendriks, Springer’s president of STM publishing, both sides will “evaluate the effects of open access on both authors and users.”
Springer spokesman Eric Merkel-Sobotta told the LJ Academic Newswire the deal was along the lines of two other recent “experimental” deals Springer has struck, one with UKB, a consortium of the Universities and the Royal Library of the Netherlands, and one with the Georg-August University of Göttingen, both of which also waive author fees for those institutional researchers choosing to submit to Springer journals using Open Choice. The standard Open Choice author fee is $3000.
Springer’s Jan Velterop, an OA pioneer during his years at BioMed Central wrote on his blog that the new deal “could quite conceivably yield an increase in article submissions to Springer journals by authors from Max Planck Institutes…in fact, such an increase is expected, over time.” On his blog, OA advocate Peter Suber noted that this kind of deal “helps create a new body of OA content articles by faculty at participating institutions for about the same price that institutions currently pay for subscriptions.” Velterop added that such deals could reconcile “the desire for universal and immediate open access to peer-reviewed scientific journal articles with the need to ensure the economic sustainability of peer-reviewed journals.”
In October, 2007, after negotiations had broken down, MPS VP Kurt Mehlhorn said Springer was intent on charging “approximately double the price” the organization regarded as “reasonable.” In a statement, MPS officials suggested the breakdown in negotiations with Springer was representative of “extreme price developments in the supply of information, as well as usage restrictions,” and suggested scientific organizations throughout the world should “rethink” their information policies.
Chalk it up to all’s fair in negotiation. Merkel-Sobotta said Springer has always been open to open access, so long as any such system recognizes the value added by journal publishers and said that despite the public perception of acrimony, the two sides continued to talk and that Springer was “very pleased” with the eventual, innovative deal—and also interested to see what the next two years will look like. “If researchers really want open access,” he noted, “we’ll see.”
Library Journal Academic Newswire, Feb 5, 2008
