Department of Economic and Social Psychology joins boycott of Elsevier

Starting from 1 January 2019, the Department for Economic and Social Psychology joins in the boycott of the Elsevier scientific publishing house. Due to this boycott, members of the department will no longer submit articles for publication in Elsevier journals and will not act as reviewers or editors of Elsevier journals. As a first step, Prof. Schulz-Hardt has resigned from his position as editor of the Journal of Economic Psychology. Thus, the department joins the initiative "The Cost of Knowledge" [1], in the course of which more than 17,000 scientists worldwide have already made similar statements. ## Background As part of the "DEAL" project, the Alliance of German Science Organisations has been negotiating new license agreements for scientific publications with all major science publishers since 2016. One of the aims of the negotiations is to ensure that all publications by authors from participating German institutions are automatically available free of charge (Open Access). A further goal is an appropriate pricing of the licences. While negotiations with the publishers Springer Nature and Wiley are constructive and nearing completion, the Alliance of Science Organisations was forced to suspend negotiations with Elsevier in July 2018 due to excessive demands (see [2]). In response to the interruption of the negotiations, Elsevier terminated access to it's publications for the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen and around 200 other renowned German scientific institutions on July 10, 2018 (see [3]). Elsevier is one of the largest scientific publishers in the world, with around 430,000 scientific papers published annually in around 2,500 journals [4]. With its pricing and publication policy, Elsevier stands for the systematic obstruction of free access to publicly financed research results. At the same time, Elsevier is one of the world's most profitable companies with a profit margin of 37% and a turnover of approx. 2.8 billion euros in 2017 [4]. This profit margin is largely made possible by the predominantly free work of scientists who act as editors, reviewers and authors of the publisher's journals. The costs are borne by the taxpayers through the public financing of research and the payment of licence fees to the publishers. We can no longer participate in this system: Publicly funded research must be freely accessible. Further information on this topic can be found in the press release [5] and the FAQ [6] of the Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen. ## Further information [1] [The Cost of Knowledge](http://thecostofknowledge.com) [2] [Press release of the German Rectors' Conference on the suspension of negotiations](https://www.hrk.de/presse/pressemitteilungen/pressemitteilung/meldung/verhandlungen-von-deal-und-elsevier-elsevier-forderungen-sind-fuer-die-wissenschaft-inakzeptabel-440/) [3] [DEAL project - contract terminations Elsevier](https://www.projekt-deal.de/vertragskuendigungen_elsevier/) [4] [Annual Report 2017 of the RELX Group](https://www.relx.com/~/media/Files/R/RELX-Group/documents/reports/annual-reports/relx2017-annual-report.pdf) [5] [Press release of the SUB Göttingen on the topic of Elsevier shutdown](https://www.sub.uni-goettingen.de/sub-aktuell/einzelansicht/keine-volltexte-von-zeitschriften-der-verlage-elsevier-und-cell-press-seit-1072018/) [6] [FAQ of the SUB Göttingen about the project DEAL](https://www.sub.uni-goettingen.de/digitale-bibliothek/e-medien/e-journals/#c11179)