FAQ for Participating Institutions
How to benefit from DEAL:
Which institutions are eligible to participate?
All academic and research institutions in Germany that are entitled to participate in the Alliance and national licenses funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) (including: universities, universities of applied sciences, research institutions, state and regional libraries) are eligible to participate in the DEAL-Wiley agreement.
Where can I find the full text of the DEAL contracts?
The DEAL-Wiley contract, signed on January 15, 2019 by Wiley and MPDL Services GmbH, was published at:
https://doi.org/10.17617/2.3027595
The negotiations with Springer Nature are still ongoing. The Memorandum of Understanding with Springer Nature, signed on August 22, 2019, is not publicly available. However, the finalized contract is expected be published in autumn 2019.
Whom should I contact if I would like to participate?
Institutions that have not yet been contacted but consider themselves entitled should contact MPDL Services GmbH via support@mpdl-services.de.
Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL) Services GmbH is a 100% subsidiary of the Max Planck Society and acts as signing contractual partner in the DEAL agreement with Wiley. The Max Planck Society, as a member of the Alliance of Science Organizations – after approval by the federal and state governments financing it in the Joint Science Conference (GWK) – founded the MPDL Services GmbH to enable execution of the DEAL contract with Wiley, in the name of Projekt DEAL, a project in the “Digital Information” priority initiative of the Alliance of German Science Organizations.
What documentation is required for participation?
In order to participate, institutions must sign a declaration of participation to the agreement with MPDL Services GmbH and a “sign-up” document for the publisher agreeing to the publisher’s terms of use; MPDL Services GmbH will forward the latter document to the publisher.
Who is responsible for invoicing?
Participating institutions receive their invoices for all contractual services from MPDL Services GmbH, including article fees for publications in the publisher’s Gold Open Access journals. Invoices for 2019 will be issued immediately upon receipt of electronic confirmation of the binding declaration of participation.
What are the costs for my institution to participate in the DEAL-Wiley contract?
Participating institutions are billed an individual participation fee by MPDL Services GmbH.
For Wiley, the amount of the participation fee is based on the cost of the institution’s 2017 Wiley subscription (if known) with slight annual increases; as stated in HRK Circular No. 02/2019, the participation fee schedule is calculated so:
2019 participation fee = 2017 subscription price + 8%
2020 participation fee = 2017 subscription price + 10%
2021 participation fee = 2017 subscription price + 12,5%
The participation fees therefore represent a year on year increase of 2,961% for 2018-2021. Those institutions who participated in the 2018 transitional agreement as DEAL negotiations were ongoing were billed 2017 fees with no increase.
The participation fee covers reading access to the “Wiley Online” journal portfolio and advance payment on Open Access publishing of articles in subscription journals. As the overall agreement cost model is based on the number of articles published, a mechanism for adjustment (credits / balance invoices) taking into account the actual publishing output of the institution in the course of the year is being studied for the contract years 2020 and 2021; as stated in HRK Circular No. 02/2019. Further details will be provided in due course. With regard to publishing in fully Open Access journals (ie pure Gold), MPDL Services GmbH has paid a deposit in advance to the publisher and will, in turn, invoice the participating institutions for each article published by their affiliated authors at a later date. The agreement extends a 20% discount on the list price of publishing in Wiley’s Gold Open Access journals.
What are the costs for my institution to participate in the DEAL-Springer Nature contract?
The final contract with Springer Nature will be signed in autumn 2019. The participation model will be communicated via an HRK circular.
What does “submitting corresponding author” mean?
This refers to those authors who submit the manuscript to the publisher and who are responsible for correspondence relating to the article.
How will publications be assigned to my institution within the framework of a DEAL agreement?
The publisher identifies authorized authors during the submission and publication process and initiates subsequent verification processes with the participating institutions.
Within the framework of the Wiley contract, the verification process is carried out with the help of Open Access dashboards. These are online platforms through which the participating institutions can view and confirm the publications assigned to them.
For more information on managing Open Access publications using the Wiley OA dashboards, click here:
https://secure.wiley.com/DEAL_FAQ
How can I estimate the number of publications from my institution with individual publishers?
The Open Access Monitor developed and hosted by the Forschungszentrum Jülich provides a preliminary orientation:
https://open-access-monitor.de/#/dashboard
When using the Open Access Monitor, please be aware that all publications from your institution will be shown, including those where a researcher from your institution was merely a co-author. For cost estimations, please note that you only need to take into account the proportion of your publication volume showing a corresponding author from your institution. To break down the total publications to corresponding author shares, you should factor out 30%-50% of the total number. Publication figures of university hospitals must also be queried separately; please note that in these cases there may also be double counting of publications with the hospital’s’ corresponding universities.
How does the PAR-fee relate to the DFG funding limit of 2000 € for Open Access publishing?
The Publish & Read Fee (PAR-fee) for hybrid journals introduced with the DEAL-Wiley agreement cannot be equated with an Article Processing Charge (APC), for which a funding limit of 2,000 € has been set as part of the DFG’s “Open Access Publishing” funding program. In contrast to an APC, which only covers the publication services rendered by a publisher for a single contribution/professional article, the PAR-fee of the Wiley-DEAL contract currently also covers the costs for unrestricted read access to the publisher’s entire journal portfolio. All participating institutions benefit from this level of access, including those that previously had little or no subscription access to Wiley journals.
The PAR-fee not only covers full access to Wiley journals for all German institutions, but also includes an Open Access component: Articles by “submitting corresponding authors” from academic and research institutions in Germany shall be published directly in Open Access in almost all subscription journals.
The PAR-fee model is merely an intermediate step in the transformation phase towards a publication system based on Open Access. This step, however, is necessary in order to enable upcoming changes in the workflows, payment streams and service portfolios of academic libraries and publishers. The PAR-fee must therefore be viewed in a different strategic context than the upper price limit for APCs set by the DFG. The objective is to then transition the PAR-fee model to a transparent and purely publication-based pricing model after 2021.
Is there a way for my institution to save money by participating in the DEAL agreement?
Before the DEAL-Wiley agreement, authors who elected to publish their articles Open Access in Wiley subscription (hybrid) journals paid article processing charges, often from their respective research funds. Hybrid Open Access publishing in Wiley subscription journals has typically cost between 2,000 € and 3,800 €, and sometimes up to 4,700 €, per article and this cost has come on top of the subscription fees your institution was paying for access to Wiley journals. This practice, which has been strongly criticized in recent years under the buzzword “double dipping”, is now brought to an end by transformative agreement such as the DEAL-Wiley contract.
Last update: August 22, 2019