Read & Publish Services

In addition to the joint development of unique services in support of the open science ambitions of the Netherlands, this partnership also incorporates Publish and Read components. The previous transformative agreement between UNL and Elsevier that predated this partnership (2016 through 2019) ensured an expansion of Open Access publishing from 6% to 28% during the term of the contract, while the current partnership supports the Netherlands’ ambition to reach 100% open access.

The uptake of Open Access publishing is being monitored closely in accordance with the agreement. You will find current Open Access uptake figures here (2021), here (2022) and here (2023).

The agreement also includes reading access to quality, peer-reviewed content across Elsevier’s journals. Researchers benefit from access to the ScienceDirect platform, a platform of peer-reviewed scholarly literature that includes content from more than 2,650 academic journals and over 41,000 e-books.

Reading as a service as understood under this agreement goes beyond only making scientific research available to readers, as it deploys innovative tools to ensure better findability and navigability of content, too. UNL, KNAW, NOW and NFU institutes can use Scopus to support discoverability and other use cases.