Nine members of the Dutch UKB consortium finalized an agreement with Karger Publishers which incorporates the publication of a fixed number of Open Access (OA) articles into the license arrangement. The Swiss-based company is one of the first publishing houses to implement this innovative model in the Netherlands, after the Dutch government prioritized OA for Dutch Universities.
New Access and Publication Model
The consortial agreement grants the participating UKB libraries and their clients full perpetual access to all Karger journal content of 2016 and 2017 as before. The novel part is that affiliated authors may publish up to 250 OA articles per year with Karger without having to pay the usual OA Article Processing Charges (APCs). Authors are free to submit to any of the 100 plus peer-reviewed hybrid and full OA Karger journals; however, they are asked to mention their affiliation with a participating institution during submission.
The nine members of the UKB consortium, which are all part of the Dutch Academic Medical Libraries Group (CAMBIN), are Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam, Leiden University, University of Groningen, Maastricht University, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Utrecht University, Tilburg University and Wageningen University. The agreement with the Swiss medical and scientific publisher Karger is effective for 2016 and 2017 and can be extended to 2018.
A Milestone for Karger
“This is an important milestone for us. I am proud that we have been able to respond to the needs of our Dutch partners so quickly and in a very pragmatic way,” says Gabriella Karger, CEO of Karger Publishers. The agreement is based on a new access and publication model which was developed in close cooperation with the Dutch universities. Gabriella Karger adds: “I cannot repeat it often enough: talk to us. We are listening. And together we will find a solution.”
The license agreement between Karger Publishers and UKB corresponds to the Dutch government’s guidelines in support of Open Access.
