Dutch research institutions and Elsevier initiate national Open Science partnership

It has just been announced that the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU), The Netherlands Federation of University Medical Centres (NFU), The Dutch Research Council (NWO) and Elsevier, a global leader in research publishing and information analytics, have formed a novel partnership that includes publishing and reading services as well as the joint development of new open science services for disseminating and evaluating knowledge. The partnership runs until 31 December 2024.

The VSNU has prepared an FAQ and the contract has been made public on the website. On openaccess.nl the contract information will soon this week be released alongside the Elsevier workflow.

In December 2019, the research institutions and Elsevier signed a framework agreement. During the past four months, both parties carefully developed this into a unique agreement. In parallel the Dutch Research Institutions established an independent expert Taskforce on responsible management of research information and data to determine the conditions and rules under which metadata of public research output can be (re)used and enriched by all public and private organizations. Following the advice of the Taskforce, a set of collaboration principles was agreed, including data ownership (researchers and/or institutions own their own research data), enduring access to data and metadata, vendor neutrality, interoperability, and institutional discretion on the use of the services.

This has led to the agreement that VSNU, NFU, NWO and Elsevier announce today, and which comprises:

1) Open Access Publishing and Reading services. This is a national deal that covers reading rights to quality, peer-reviewed content across Elsevier’s extensive portfolio of journals and supports the aim of 100% open access publishing for all members of the consortium. From today, 95% of Dutch articles published in Elsevier journals can be made immediately open access through this agreement. The vast majority of Elsevier’s journals already offer an immediate open access option and, as part of this agreement, the company has committed to work towards immediate open access options across all remaining titles.

2) Open Science Services for Research Intelligence and Scholarly communication. Elsevier will work with the Dutch partners to co-develop new services that help disseminate and evaluate knowledge. The parties will undertake a number of pilot projects to refine and adapt these services to meet the needs of the Dutch Research Institutions and to support the broader ambition of public engagement with science. These pilots will be conducted according to the collaboration principles as mentioned above.