ISTOCK, JANE_KELLY
In the Netherlands, as in many other European countries, universities are pushing for scholarly journals to become open access. Driven in part by the E.U.’s mandate to make all scientific articles freely available by 2020, the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU), which represents 14 of the country’s academic institutions, has been negotiating new subscription deals with publishers. Many of these discussions have been fruitful—over the last few years the consortium has secured 100-percent open-access agreements, where all papers with Dutch corresponding authors are made freely available, with major publishing houses such as SpringerNature and Wiley.
There have, however, been clashes with a few publishers along the way, leaving researchers without access to some journals.
In general, VSNU is pushing for academic publishers to ...
