Open access by decree: a success of Plan S?

“Science family of journals announces change to open-access policy”: the title of this Nature news article may sound boring, but the news are not:

Science is allowing authors to distribute their articles under Creative Commons license, free of charge, without embargo.

Sounds too good to be true? Well, of course, there are caveats. First, this is the author’s accepted version, not the published version. (OK, minor point.) Second, this is a trial policy, which may or may not be made permanent. And third, this only applies to authors who are mandated to do so by their Coalition S funders.

Who, you may ask, are these happy authors? I will defer to Wikipedia for reminders about Plan S and Coalition S, and move to the next question: how did Coalition S achieve this? Last summer, Coalition S announced a Rights Retention Strategy that mandates fundees to distribute their work under CC license, without embargo, no matter what the publisher makes them sign. In their own words,

This public licence and/or agreed prior obligations take legal precedence over any later Licence to Publish or Copyright Transfer Agreement that the publisher may ask the author to sign.

This type of “open access by decree” may sound like little more than an exercise in blame-shifting. To an author who is caught between a funder and a journal’s incompatible demands, it should not matter who blacklists the other: the author cannot publish in that journal. However, Plan S got bad press among some researchers for appearing to blacklist journals. Now it is the journals who will have to blacklist funders, and to reject submitted articles for technicalities.

The success of the maneuver depends on publishers’ reactions. Coalition S is too big to ignore, so publishers have to take a stand. Nature journals have recently announced their adoption of Gold open access options, for a charge of the order of 9.500 euros per article. This was denounced as outrageously expensive. Björn Brembs even took it as a refutation of the widespread idea that the author-pays model would lead to lower costs.

However, Coalition S-funded authors can now choose between publishing in Science for free, or in Nature for 9.500 euros. It does seem that Science is competing on price! Not so fast: Nature’s high price is partly an illusion, as it comes in the context of transformative agreements, which are supposed to transition Springer Nature’s journals to open access. The idea is that academic institutions’ journal subscriptions would also cover open access publishing of their researcher’s articles. For an author who is covered by a transformative agreement, publishing open access in Nature is effectively free, which may be why Science had to offer the same for free, just to stay competitive.

At this stage, it is not clear which authors will face which choices of open access options and pricing. It is therefore a bit early for seeing the effects of the Rights Retention Strategy. At least, we now have the admission by an important publisher that open access is not an extra service that should bring them extra revenue.

CNRS rejects Couperin's claimed victory in Springer big deal

After long and tortuous negotiations, the French consortium Couperin has claimed victory in its recent agreement with Springer, after having secured price decreases. This claim seems reasonable, as prices of big deals with publishers tend to increase steadily. Of course, critics can still point out that Springer remains very expensive compared to smaller, more efficient publishers. But at least Springer seems amenable to some compromises in negotiations. And one should not forget that the greediest and most obnoxious publisher remains Elsevier, who even refused to join the Initiative for open citations.

I was therefore surprised when CNRS announced its rejection of the Springer deal, although CNRS takes part in Couperin and was actively involved in the negotiations. The email announcement came from Alain Schuhl, a CNRS official who is also a member of Couperins’ governing council. (See the email and its English translation below.) This email was a warning to CNRS researchers that access to Springer journals was now cut off. However, articles from 2017 and earlier are still available, as they are coverd by the previous subscription.

The explanation for the rejection is that the deal’s price was too high according to the Ministry’s open science plan. This explanation makes little sense for two reasons:

Springer threatens to go rogue, and retreats

In its negotiations with Springer, the consortium Couperin that was in charge of most French researchers’ subscriptions had been modestly asking that Springer renounce “double dipping”, i.e. does not get paid twice for the same articles – once via subscriptions, once via open access APCs. But this would have meant decreasing subscription prices by 15%, while Springer has been used to yearly increases of the order of 3-5%.

Today’s news are that negotiations have broken down, and most French researchers are set to lose legal access to most articles published by Springer on April 1st. (See CNRS’s note on the subject, in French.) In such a conflict, researchers can stand up against the publisher by

• not complaining when they lose access to journals, and getting the articles elsewhere (which nowadays mostly means at Sci-Hub),
• boycotting the publisher, i.e. not submitting articles to its journals, and not working for them as a referee or editor.

Coincidentally, I have received an invitation to referee an article for JHEP, a journal published by Springer. I have declined as follows:

Most French research institutions are set to lose access to Springer journals on April 1st. I am aware that this does not affect access to JHEP, which is covered by SCOAP3, and that in our field all articles are on arXiv anyway. However, as a matter of principle, I would like to protest Springer’s extortionate commercial practices, and to show solidarity with colleagues who will lose access to their own work. Therefore, I am suspending all new collaboration with JHEP, and I am declining to review this article.

Update on April 3rd: According to an email from Couperin, access to Springer journals has in fact not been cut off. It seems that Couperin got away with rejecting Springer's latest offer, and saying that they were willing to continue negotiating. So Springer was bluffing, and does not dare take a hard line against Couperin. If such a weak and ill-prepared consortium, with little support from researchers (who else is boycotting Springer?) can defeat Springer, pretty much anyone can.

Update on April 11th: There is now a petition called "Springer, we can do without".

Update on October 18th: An agreement has been found between Couperin and Springer. Couperin boasts that it has obtained a modest price decrease: this merely reverses a few years out of several decades of unjustified increases. And the 9-10 months where Couperin's member institutes kept access to Springer journals without a subscription, will eventually be paid retroactively. (Except for institutes who did not accept the new agreement.) Still, Springer's behaviour is not too bad for a predatory publisher. And the price decrease is in absolute terms a large amount of money, which could make much difference if it was injected into frugal publishing platforms. So I am no longer boycotting Springer.

Couperin is now negotiating with Elsevier, aiming to achieve comparable savings, and pushing for open access. Nevertheless, it is not clear to me how Couperin's deal with Springer, and negotiating stance with Elsevier, are compatible with the Plan S to which CNRS officially subscribes: if Couperin believed in Plan S, it should at least refrain from committing beyond 2020, the date at which Plan S is supposed to come into force.

Couperin vs Springer and Elsevier: towards less extortionate deals?

Historically, the French consortium Couperin has obtained poor results in negotiating with predatory publishers, mostly consenting to their high and increasing prices. This is not necessarily Couperin’s fault, although it does not help that Couperin’s leadership appears weak and ill-informed. Rather, this is a consequence of the basic economics of scientific publishing, with publishers systematically abusing their strong position. Even the Finnish consortium FinELib, which was determined to seek a good deal and enjoyed a fair amount of support from researchers, recently consented to one more extortionate deal with Elsevier.

However, recent developments suggest that Couperin could fare better in current and upcoming negotiations:

After Elsevier, should we boycott Springer?

While the ongoing “Cost of knowledge” boycott of Elsevier may not be very effective, the likely “no deal” hard exit of Germany from Elsevier subscriptions renews the boycott’s relevance, and maybe its urgency. It is indeed likely that most German universities and research institutions will lose access to Elsevier articles in 2018.

As a researcher, why would I continue publishing in journals that are in principle inaccessible to most of my German colleagues? Universal access to the literature via Sci-Hub is under increasing legal assault and should not be taken for granted. In these circumstances, boycotting Elsevier is no longer only a matter of fighting an obnoxious publisher, but also a basic necessity of ensuring that articles are accessible to their intended audience. (Unless one thinks that the intended audience is not the scientific community, but the paying Elsevier subscribers.)

Now it turns out that if I boycott Elsevier because of Germany, I may have to boycott Springer because of France.