Wiley and Projekt DEAL Partnership Pilots New Publishing Models

Wiley and Projekt DEAL establish a groundbreaking partnership for Germany to pilot new publishing models, better enable researchers to create and disseminate knowledge through Wiley’s journals, and continue to provide participating German institutions access to Wiley’s portfolio of academic journals.

Wiley announced today a countrywide partnership agreement with Projekt DEAL, a representative of nearly 700 academic institutions in Germany. Under an annual fee, this transformative three-year agreement provides all Projekt DEAL institutions with access to read Wiley’s academic journals back to the year 1997, and researchers at Projekt DEAL institutions can publish articles open access in Wiley’s journals. The partnership will better support institutions and researchers in advancing open science, driving discovery, and developing and disseminating knowledge.

To support the overall advancement of scholarly research, Wiley and Projekt DEAL are together launching three important new initiatives as part of the partnership. First a new flagship open access journal. This interdisciplinary journal will publish top-tier scholarship from the global research community and will serve as a unique forum for the development of new open access publishing models. In another key aspect of the agreement, Wiley and Projekt DEAL will establish an open science and author services development group focused on innovating and accelerating new publishing approaches. The partners will also create and host a new annual symposium for early-career German researchers focused on surfacing cutting-edge ideas on the future of research communications.

“Wiley is excited to undertake this important partnership with Projekt DEAL. Our partnership and joint projects reflect Wiley’s commitment to the research community, with whom we share a belief that advancing scholarly research and accelerating the creation of knowledge has a profound and lasting positive impact on society,” said Executive Vice President of Research at Wiley, Judy Verses. “Wiley and Projekt DEAL both believe that we can work together to improve and lead the way in which knowledge is created and shared more openly.”

“With the agreement now reached, an important milestone has been achieved, ” explained Professor Dr. Horst Hippler, former president of the German Rectors’ Conference, speaker of the Steering Committee and head of the DEAL project. “We have achieved a core goal: a fair pricing model, which will allow us to make research accessible in an affordable and sustainable manner. It is revolutionary that we are taking this path to an open access publication practice together with Wiley. I would like to thank the Max Planck Society for their support with the final contract signing.“

In order to enable the signing of the Projekt DEAL contract with Wiley, the Max Planck Society, as a member of the Alliance of Science Organisations behind the Projekt DEAL Consortium, founded MPDL Services GmbH. “Following the request of the alliance of research organizations in Germany, we have been happy to organize and implement this national contract with Wiley. This is in full accordance with efforts such as OA2020 that the Max Planck Society has undertaken over many years to promote open access of scientific publications, to invest in modern scientific publishing methods and to make sure that the copyrights of scientific articles stay where these belong, namely with our scientists“, said Max Planck President Martin Stratmann.

Photo: Dr. Guido Herrmann (l.), Vice-President and Managing Director Wiley Germany, and Dr. Frank Sander, Managing Director MPDL Services GmbH, after signing the contract. © Wiley/picture alliance/Tanja M. Marotzke