Lib4RI-Update #39 - No-deal with Wiley

Negotiations for a new Swiss agreement with the academic publisher Wiley were discontinued on 31 March. As a consequence, Wiley has blocked access to 2025 journal issues, and researchers in Switzerland can no longer publish Open Access within the read & publish agreement. Please find some background information as well as recommended actions for the researchers of the 4RIs below.

Discontinued negotiations

Wiley and swissuniversities did not reach an agreement after more than a year of negotiations. In a statement, swissuniversities referred to the latest offer by Wiley, which, despite interesting elements, also proposed a price per article at a substantially higher level than in other European countries. The Swiss higher education institutions (HEIs) are committed to “ensuring the financial sustainability of academic publishing and stabilise reasonable price levels”.

The negotiation delegation of swissuniversities acts as a representative for all Swiss HEIs. Bundling bargaining power is important to achieve favourable outcomes in such an oligopolistic market.

Implications for researchers of the 4RIs

Lib4RI is dedicated to the principles of the Swiss National Open Access Strategy, and we fully support swissuniversities in their decision. However, the current situation will pose limitations on the reading access and publishing options for researchers at the four research institutes.

• Access to articles published by Wiley up until 2024 remains unaffected. Should you require access to articles that are no longer available, please reach out to us.
• Lib4RI will not fund any fees for publishing Open Access in hybrid or pure Open Access journals of Wiley. We recommend avoiding publishing in Wiley journals. If you still decide to publish in Wiley hybrid journals, consider publishing closed access and make the paper openly available via Green Open Access.

We are aware of the challenges that this situation creates for researchers planning to publish in Wiley journals and we hope that future negotiations will result in a more favourable agreement. We will keep you updated on further developments.

Further recommended actions for researchers and institutions

The Delegation Open Science of swissuniversities has compiled a list of recommended actions
for the Swiss HEIs. We also recommend following these points to support the Swiss standing in future negotiations with the publisher as well as keeping the no-deal situation as brief as possible.

• Do not use central funds for publication fees
• Consider alternatives to Wiley
• Make publications available in Green Open Access
• Editors should advocate for the Swiss research community
• Review activities for Wiley should be reconsidered

Should you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to us.

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