Universities represent accessible science, which is why they are working hard to provide more open access publications. In order to achieve this aim, we have been concluding agreements with publishers to make academic publications accessible free of charge. In 2020, contracts with a number of major publishers were renewed.  These new deals make the results of academic research accessible free of charge to everyone worldwide rather than just to the university community and university hospitals. Researchers at Dutch universities will be able to publish their work open access in journals for which licences have been purchased – at no extra cost. 

The following contracts have been renewed:

• Wiley: this contract runs until the end of 2023 and provides access to more than 1,400 academic journals, in which there are no restrictions with regard to open access publication;
• Taylor & Francis: this contract runs until the end of 2023. Researchers, lecturers and students from Dutch universities can consult articles in the 2,242 academic journals offered by this publisher. The deal allows researchers, who are corresponding authors, to publish an average of 1,450 articles via open access each year;
• Oxford University Press: this contract runs until the end of 2023 and provides reading rights for 350 academic journals and open access publication of up to 760 articles per year;
• Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC): the contract with this publisher has been extended by one year until the end of 2021. Reading and publication rights to 40 journals have been secured, which also allows for open access publication. A sustainable multi-year contract is currently being negotiated. The new contract is expected to be concluded at the end of 2021.

In addition, a new contract was concluded with Elsevier earlier in 2020, which provides access to more than 2,200 academic journals with no restrictions on open access publishing. The contract runs until the end of 2024. We are currently working with Elsevier to develop pilots that will help us realise our open science ambitions.

Once signed, the contracts of all the agreements will be publicly available in the European ESAC Registry. You can consult them via openaccess.nl. The website also contains an overview of the journals covered by the deals. The journal browser provides an overview of the open access publishing opportunities for each journal. It also provides information on the agreements made with other academic publishers and the opportunities available with fully open access publishers.