Berlin, Germany - November 28, 2023 - The DEAL Consortium and scholarly publisher Wiley today announced the signing of a new five-year agreement which will allow scientists from German academic institutions to publish their research open access (OA) within Wiley's portfolio of scientific journals. Instituted by the Alliance of German Science Organizations the DEAL Consortium is open to more than 900 mostly publicly funded academic institutions in Germany. Signed by Wiley and MPDL Services gGmbH as the DEAL Operating Entity, the new agreement will begin in January 2024, offering further support for the needs of the scholarly community and accelerate the open access transformation.
The new agreement continues the successful collaboration that started in 2019 and through which by now over 38,000 articles have been published open access. It will provide authors at participating German institutions with open access publishing options across Wiley's portfolio alongside read access to all Wiley journal content. The new agreement will also:
- Support institutions in the transition to OA, honoring the immense value learned societies bring to the scholarly community.
- Enhance infrastructure, including robust workflows to support authors, librarians and open access administrators.
- Support participating institutions with bespoke training and continuing collaboration with the Wiley DEAL Advisory Board to monitor success.
All DEAL institutions have been invited to join the new agreement. Institutions that opt-in to participate will continue to benefit from well established, comprehensive open access publishing options and access to Wiley's extensive portfolio of scholarly journals.
The original agreement was the first transformative agreement for DEAL and represents a cornerstone of Wiley's approach to open access. Wiley has signed open access agreements with approximately 80 partners worldwide, which cover over 2,500 institutions.
"I am very satisfied with the agreement, which represents a very good opt-in offer for libraries to provide open access publishing services to the German scientific community," said Prof. Günter M. Ziegler, president of Freie Universität Berlin and DEAL lead negotiator. "Moreover, this new agreement supports the general goal of establishing open access as the standard for scientific publishing and increasing the global visibility and reach of research at German scientific institutions. The new contract continues the successful cooperation since 2019 and reflects the ever-evolving relationship between science and publishing. Based on our joint commitment to the transformation of hybrid journals into Gold Open Access we will continue to develop our successful relationship. I would like again to express my gratitude to all parties involved in this process."
"As the first publisher to sign an open access agreement with the DEAL Consortium, we have long been committed to serving the German research community," said Liz Ferguson, Senior Vice President, Wiley Research Publishing. "We're extremely proud to be continuing our strong partnership with the DEAL Consortium and the thousands of scholars it represents."
