swissuniversities adopted the national Open Access Strategy and the Open Access Action Plan in February 2018 with the aim of making all publicly funded publications available in Open Access by 2024. A prerequisite for reaching this goal it that agreements with academic publishers are in place that allow authors affiliated with Swiss universities and institutions of higher education to publish their work (e.g. journal articles, book parts and monographs) in Open Access. In the negotiations with three major publishers Elsevier, Springer Nature and Wiley, swissuniversities is pursuing the Read&Publish model, which both includes reading access to academic journals and covers the Open Access publication of higher education institutions.
Negotiations with publishers on transformative Open Access agreements are complex and time-consuming. For swissuniversities, the agreements with Elsevier and Springer Nature prove that the principle of cost-neutral Read&Publish agreements is a viable way forward for all parties involved.
Please find further information on publishing negotiations, access to publications and answers to frequently asked questions on the swissuniversities website.
Yves Flückiger, the president of the negotiation team, is available for questions.