Karger Publishers Finalizes Open Access Agreement with Swiss Consortium

Four Swiss universities have accepted the Publish & Access offer for 2020 negotiated by Karger Publishers and the Consortium of Swiss Academic Libraries (CSAL).

The contract, which will initially be concluded for a pilot year, offers access to all Karger e-journals (including backfiles) and enables Open Access (OA) publishing in Karger journals without additional costs for the authors. 

The agreement between Karger Publishers and the Swiss consortium is particularly gratifying, as the number of universities that have shown an interest has been sufficiently large for the first time in two years. In addition to the universities of Basel and Lausanne, the University of Zurich and the Universita della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano have also opted for this offer.

Based on the experience gained in the transition year 2020, Karger Publishers will be following up with a subsequent offer for the coming years and will endeavor to win additional Swiss universities for the Karger Publish & Access model in order to convert the Swiss market to Open Access at Karger in the foreseeable future. 

“Karger is open to further innovative agreements with consortium partners to increase the share of OA content worldwide,“ said Gabriella Karger, Chairwoman and Publisher. 

In the coming year, Karger Publishers is already actively working to drive the transition to OA by converting several journals in 2021 and even more in the following years, and intends to evaluate additional guidelines and services in the field of OA.