Project DEAL – What is it?

The DEAL project was initiated by the Alliance of German Science Organisations. The aim of the operation is to negotiate Germany-wide licence agreements for online journals of the three largest scientific publishers: Wiley, Springer Nature and Elsevier.

Beyond the aim of gaining access to all the contents of the publishers’ own journals, the main focus is on systematically converting the future publication output of all participating research institutions to open access. In order to achieve this, one of the project group’s main negotiating points is that scientists and scholars from all participating institutions should in principle be able to publish their research articles in open access.

The negotiations with the publishers Wiley (since 2019) and Springer Nature (since 2020) have already successfully led to agreements. TU Chemnitz participates in both of these DEAL agreements, so that the university’s researchers are not only granted access to the contents of thousands of journals published by Springer Nature and Wiley, but are also entitled to publish their research articles in the journals of both publishers entirely in open access, without any administrative effort of their own or individual costs. Instead, the University Library will handle the funding and clearing of these fees.

So what exactly is the Wiley-DEAL?

In our blog post of 19 June 2019 we informed you about the TU Chemnitz joining the DEAL contract with the publishing house Wiley. This contract, which is currently limited to three years until the end of 2021, is the result of intensive discussions between the DEAL negotiating group and the publishing house as outlined above and is the first milestone on the path towards nationwide licensing agreements with the world’s largest scientific publishers.

Specifically, the DEAL agreement with Wiley includes a reading component: Access to current and past contents of approximately 1,500 of the publisher’s journals that do not yet feature Open Access. And there is the publication component described above, which enables researchers to undertake („hybrid“) Open Access publication in the same journals and additionally in almost 180 pure („golden“) Open Access journals.

How to participate?

On its website , the University Library has compiled an overview of the most important key points and answers to many questions about how the Wiley DEAL publishing component works.

Virtual event on ‘Open Access publishing under the terms of the Wiley DEAL’ on 2 July 2020

So far, more than 30 articles by TU Chemnitz authors have already been published under the Wiley DEAL. In order to provide an introduction for researchers who have not yet made use of this offer, but also to answer possible questions for researchers experienced in using this system, the University Library, together with the publisher Wiley, is organising a virtual information day on 2 July 2020 via BigBlueButton, the university’s web conference system. The experts will give talks on basic questions and also provide information on details such as choosing the right licence or the function of the author dashboard when submitting articles.

The complete programme including abstracts can be found on our event website.

Each item on the programme will also include a question and answer session.

All you need to participate is a computer with Internet access and speakers – a microphone and webcam are not necessary. Questions can be transmitted to the moderators* during the event via the chat function of the conference system.

We will gladly accept your registration on our website or by e-mail at oa@bibliothek.tu-chemnitz.de. There you can also send us your questions about the Wiley-DEAL in advance. We will try to address these during the event.

Please note: The event itself will be held in German, but you can also submit your questions in English, and we will try to answer them in both languages.

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Image: ‘Wiley Informationstag TU Chemnitz’: Copyright holder Chemnitz University of Technology, all rights reserved. Designed using the following copyrighted content: Logo ‘TU Chemnitz’: Rights holder Chemnitz University of Technology, all rights reserved // Logo ‘Projekt DEAL’: Copyright holder Project DEAL, used under CC BY 4.0 // Logo ‘Wiley’: Copyright holder John Wiley & Sons, all rights reserved.