The DEAL Consortium and Elsevier Announce Transformative Open Access Agreement for Germany

The DEAL Consortium(opens in new tab/window), representing the German research institutions, and Elsevier, a global leader in scientific information and data analytics, are delighted to announce a transformative open access agreement for Germany. The landmark five-year agreement, signed on 1 September by Elsevier and the DEAL operating entity, MPDL Services gGmbH (MPDLS), is set to run until the end of 2028 and is designed to make a large part of German research openly accessible worldwide.

The agreement, forged through collaboration and mutual understanding, supports the transition to open access in Germany, enabling researchers to publish open access and read content across Elsevier’s extensive portfolio of high quality and trusted scientific journals including leading brands such as Cell Press and The Lancet, while meeting DEAL’s objectives of affordability and sustainability.

Under the terms of the agreement, authors from participating institutions can publish their articles in Elsevier's journals with immediate open access based on a per-article fee charged to their institution, enabling researchers around the world to access and benefit from their results. In addition, institutions will receive discounts on the list prices for their researchers' publications in fully open access Elsevier journals. Participating institutions will also have reading access to virtually the entire portfolio of Elsevier journals on ScienceDirect, the world’s largest platform dedicated to peer-reviewed primary scientific and medical research.

The transformative agreement is designed to offer good value to the German research community. Institutions will soon be invited to participate in order to bring it into effect.

Prof. Günter M. Ziegler, President of Freie Universität Berlin and DEALs lead negotiator, said: “We believe that this agreement is a significant step forward for the scientific community and demonstrates that positive change can be achieved through persistent effort and a shared commitment to open science. By working together, we can further advance the principles of transparency, accessibility and collaboration that underpin the pursuit of knowledge. The agreement fulfils the key objectives set out by the Alliance of Science Organizations in Germany for the DEAL negotiations in enabling open access publishing and reading across Elsevier’s portfolio. This agreement will substantially enhance the global visibility of Germany's cutting-edge research while promoting open access to publicly funded science.”

Kumsal Bayazit, CEO of Elsevier, remarked: “We are very pleased to be able to support German researchers to publish their research with immediate open access in Elsevier’s journals. The DEAL Consortium and Elsevier worked together collaboratively and pragmatically to support Germany’s world-leading academic and science organizations achieve their research goals for the benefit of society. Elsevier is committed to continue to support our customers to achieve their objectives.”

Dr. Frank Sander, Managing Director at MPDLS, said: “This agreement is the result of the collective commitment of all German higher education, research and research infrastructure organizations acting jointly through MPDL Services gGmbH. Reflecting our shared vision for an open and affordable system of scholarly communication that maximizes the impact of research, the agreement provides DEAL institutions with cost-effective open access publishing and reading services, and we are delighted to support them in implementing the agreement to extend these benefits to scholars and scientists across the German research landscape.”

The agreement as well as further information on its terms and conditions and the sign-up process, can be found here:

(ENG) https://deal-konsortium.de/en/agreements/elsevier(opens in new tab/window)

(DE) https://deal-konsortium.de/vertraege/elsevier(opens in new tab/window)

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Notes to editors

About the DEAL Consortium

The DEAL Consortium(opens in new tab/window), instituted by the Alliance of German Science Organizations(opens in new tab/window) and led by the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK)(opens in new tab/window) aims at concluding nationwide "publish and read" agreements with the three largest commercial publishers of scholarly journals. The objective of DEAL is to secure agreements that ensure the immediate publication of research articles by authors from German institutions as open access articles and that provide perpetual full-text access to the publisher's entire journal portfolio, while at the same time achieving fair and reasonable pricing for these services through a simple and forward-looking model based on the number of articles published. The DEAL Consortium is open to around 1,000 mostly publicly funded academic institutions in Germany, including universities, universities of applied sciences, research institutes, and state and regional libraries.

About MPDL Services gGmbH

The DEAL Operating Entity MPDL Services(opens in new tab/window) gGmbH(MPDLS) boosts the visibility of the scientific community in Germany by securing open access publishing services and access to scientific literature for researchers. It provides the infrastructure and know-how to enable research institutions across Germany to benefit collectively and equitably from the cost-effectiveness of the nationwide DEAL agreements with scholarly publishers, and it concludes such DEAL agreements for the use and benefit of the scientific community in Germany. Comprising members of the Alliance of Science Organization(opens in new tab/window)s, MPDL Services, a non-profit organization (gGmbH), provides a crucial framework for the transition to open access in Germany and supports institutions in redirecting their investments in scholarly publishing towards the open dissemination of research.

About Elsevier

As a global leader in information and analytics, Elsevier helps researchers and healthcare professionals advance science and improve health outcomes for the benefit of society. We do this by facilitating insights and critical decision-making for customers across the global research and health ecosystems. In everything we publish, we uphold the highest standards of quality and integrity. We bring that same rigor to our information analytics solutions for researchers, academic leaders, funders, R&D-intensive corporations, doctors, and nurses.

Elsevier employs 9,000 people worldwide, including over 2,500 technologists. We have supported the work of our research and health partners for more than 140 years. Growing from our roots in publishing, we offer knowledge and valuable analytics that help our users make breakthroughs and drive societal progress. Digital solutions such as ScienceDirect, Scopus, SciVal, ClinicalKey and Sherpath support strategic research management, R&D performance, clinical decision support, medical education, and nursing education. Researchers and healthcare professionals rely on over 2,900 digitized journals, including The Lancet(opens in new tab/window) and Cell(opens in new tab/window); 46,000+ eBook titles; and iconic reference works, such as Gray's Anatomy. With the Elsevier Foundation(opens in new tab/window) and our external Inclusion & Diversity Advisory Board, we work in partnership with diverse stakeholders to advance inclusion and diversity in science, research and healthcare in developing countries and around the world. 

Elsevier is part of  RELX(opens in new tab/window), a global provider of information-based analytics and decision tools for professional and business customers.