Half of all peer-reviewed articles by Dutch universities available in open access

At the wrap-up of the international open access week the VSNU, The Association of Universities in The Netherlands, published the latest number of open access articles (covering 2017). Almost 23.000 peer-reviewed articles from Dutch authors are openly available for everybody.

In late 2013, State Secretary Dekker formulated objectives with regard to open access, which were then tightened in the National Open Science Plan at the start of 2017: '100% open access publishing by 2020'.

Agreements about subscription fees for academic journals are made with academic publishers on behalf of all of the Dutch universities. The VSNU is currently negotiating with these publishers on the universities’ behalf. The universities are only willing to renew the subscription agreements on the condition that the articles of all Dutch corresponding authors are available in open access.

Figures from 2017 reveal that 50% of the peer-reviewed articles from 14 Dutch universities are available open access (from a total of 55,713 articles). This was true of 42% of articles in 2016.

Koen Becking, executive open-access negotiator for the VSNU and Executive Board President at Tilburg University, is pleased with the increase. “It is encouraging to see we are making progress. We need to continue our firm negotiations and international pressure, as recently done by cOAlition S, is helpful in this”, says Becking.