About DEAL

Breaking news:

August 22, 2019:
A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed by DEAL and Springer Nature today in Berlin.
A press release can be found here. For further information on the key elements of the MoU, see here.

February 18, 2019:
The contract between DEAL and the publisher Wiley, signed on the 15th of January 2019 by Wiley and the MPDL Services GmbH, is now available here.

January 15, 2019:
The Project DEAL is happy to announce the conclusion and signing of the first major “DEAL” with Wiley!
The agreement based on the “Publish&Read” modell includes the most important goals of the Project: Publication of all future scientific articles in Open Access at no extra costs and permament access for all participating institutions to the entire portfolio of e-journals of the publisher, as far back as 1997.

For further information, see here.

Robert-Jan Smits.
Credits: Wiley/picture alliance/Tanja M. Marotzke
EU-Senior Adviser for Open Access and Innovation, Robert-Jan Smits, at the press conference after the contract signing. Credits: MPG

What is Projekt DEAL?

The German Rectors’ Conference was tasked by the Alliance of German Science Organizations to institute Projekt DEAL to conclude nationwide “publish and read” agreements with the largest commercial publishers of scholarly journals.

DEAL has negotiated on behalf of all German academic institutions including universities, universities of applied sciences, research institutions, state and regional libraries. All academic and research institutions that are entitled to participate in the Alliance and national licenses funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) are thereby eligible to participate in DEAL agreements.

What are the objectives of Projekt DEAL?

The objectives of Projekt DEAL are to achieve:

  • Immediate open access publication of all new research articles by authors from German institutions
  • Permanent full-text access to the publisher’s complete journal portfolio
  • Fair and reasonable pricing for such services articulated with a simple and future-oriented model based on the number of articles published,

These objectives are in line the LIBER principles for publisher negotiations, the principles of Plan S, and the objectives of the global OA2020 Initiative to accelerate the transition to open access. Learn more about international initiatives and negotiating strategies at the ESAC webpage.

To carry out the project, the Alliance has brought together a project group including the relevant experts from universities and other institutions. The group will be piloted by a project steering committee comprising members from the highest levels of management at universities and other institutions. The spokesperson for the project steering committee is Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Horst Hippler, former President of the German Rectors’ Conference. Contact persons for the project group are Dr. Antje Kellersohn, Director of the University Library Freiburg, and Frank Scholze, Director of the KIT Library Karlsruhe, the two members of the project group seconded from the HRK.

Project structure

Project group

Project staff

  • Wiebke Beckmann, University Library Freiburg (communications and coordination)
  • Gottfried Haufe, University Library Freiburg (public relations)
  • Laura Hoppmann, Max Planck Digital Library Munich (bibliometrics, data acquisition)