Max Planck Society and Springer reach agreement
Access to content via SpringerLink and Springer Open Choice publishing guaranteed
The Max Planck Society and Springer have reached an agreement which allows the scientists working at the 78 Max Planck Institutes and research facilities across Germany access to all content on SpringerLink, and which also includes Open ChoiceTM, Springer's open access scheme, for all researchers affiliated with a Max Planck Institute publishing in Springer’s journals. Springer's Open ChoiceTM program offers full and immediate open access for articles that are accepted for publication after a process of rigorous peer-review.
The agreement, signed on 29 January 2008, following extensive negotiations, comes in the midst of significant transformation in Science, Technology and Medicine (STM) publishing, in which alternative business models are being tested by institutes and organizations in the research community.
"The new agreement is broader in scope and reflects the changes in scholarly communication as well as the role of the Max Planck Society while also respecting Springer’s interests as a leading academic publisher," explained MPS Vice President Kurt Mehlhorn. "We have now reached a mutually beneficial agreement and I would like to thank Springer for the innovative approach and our institutes and scientists for their input and support over the past weeks."
The new agreement is based on combining the subscription model with open access, and is set up as a 2-year experiment to investigate whether this construct is a more sustainable business model for scholarly publication.
"During the period of the agreement, Springer and the Max Planck Society will evaluate the effects of open access on both authors and users. We highly value the opportunity to further develop exciting new publishing models in close cooperation with a respected institution such as the Max Planck Society," said Peter Hendriks, Springer’s President of Publishing.