Agreement with SAGE

SAGE publishers and Dutch universities have signed a two-year agreement on the transition to open access. This agreement enables researchers to publish in open access in SAGE’s academic journals. Open access publishing is partly a prepaid service by universities, enabling researchers to make their articles available to a wide audience without them having to pay extra themselves. A discount rate is also offered if Dutch researchers want to publish more open access articles outside the prepaid service. The agreement also stipulates that a further 122 titles will be added to the SAGE journals that researchers can access, bringing the total to 730.

This increased accessibility, combined with the prepaid service for a substantial portion of open access publications, is welcome news for Dutch academics. They will see their own articles become freely accessible worldwide and they will gain access themselves to articles in more traditional journals that are not yet in open access. ‘This agreement marks an important step towards open access in Dutch scholarship. It is budget-neutral, at a time when the number of open access publications is on the rise,’ says Koen Becking, president of Tilburg University and chief negotiator on behalf of the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU).