This month, approximately 300 academic institutions in Germany and Sweden lost access to new papers published in Elsevier’s journals due to a standstill in negotiations for nationwide subscription contracts. While Elsevier’s papers remain inaccessible, academics are turning to alternative means of obtaining them, such as using inter-library loan services, emailing authors, finding earlier versions on preprint servers, or buying individual papers.
“Of course, we can’t deny that it’s a loss not being able to have a complete [collection] of scientific papers in front of you and just screen through them,” says Anders Götherström, an archeologist at Stockholm University. “But I imagine eventually, we will still find a way to get the papers that we want to get.”
Josef Pfeilschifter, a pharmacologist and toxicologist at Goethe University Frankfurt, is very concerned about the loss of access to Elsevier’s journals at his institution. “For life scientists and medical scientists, [Elsevier’s titles include] ...
