The "Deal Group," a consortium of several hundred libraries and academic institutions, wants to stop the exploitation of science by large publishers with transformation contracts. Together with three colleagues, Prof. Dr. Claudia Müller-Birn, head of the HCC Research Group, explains why this approach has failed.

In the article that was published this week in the German newspaper F.A.Z., the authors show that the intentions behind the Deal Group's strive towards transformation contracts contradict the EU's efforts to establish a modern digital information infrastructure. This infrastructure should be interoperable, non-profit-oriented, and free of charge. Crucially, this infrastructure should not be linked to profit-oriented corporations but to the European Open Science Cloud. Deal meets none of these requirements.

The article takes the recently concluded contract with the largest of all major publishers - Elsevier - as a starting point to also critically examine the publisher's data exploitation practices.

You can read the full article here (subscription required) or by accessing it through the "Onleihe" with a public library membership.