ARTÍCULO DE INVESTIGACIÓN

No deal: German researchers’ publishing
and citing behaviors after Big Deal
negotiations with Elsevier

Nicholas Fraser1

, Anne Hobert2

, Najko Jahn2

, Philipp Mayr3

, and Isabella Peters1,4

1ZBW—Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, Kiel, Alemania
2Göttingen State and University Library, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Alemania
3GESIS—Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Cologne, Alemania
4Departamento de Ciencias de la Computación, Kiel University, Kiel, Alemania

Palabras clave: bibliometría, Big Deals, Alemania, Open Access, scholarly publishing

ABSTRACTO

En 2014, a union of German research organizations established Projekt DEAL, a national-level
project to negotiate licensing agreements with large scientific publishers. Negotiations between
DEAL and Elsevier began in 2016, and broke down without a successful agreement in 2018;
during this time, alrededor 200 German research institutions canceled their license agreements
with Elsevier, leading Elsevier to restrict journal access at those institutions. We investigated the
effect on researchers’ publishing and citing behaviors from a bibliometric perspective, using a
data set of ∼400,000 articles published by researchers at DEAL institutions during 2012–2020.
We further investigated these effects with respect to the timing of contract cancellations,
research disciplines, collaboration patterns, and article open-access status. We find evidence
for a decrease in Elsevier’s market share of articles from DEAL institutions, with the largest
year-on-year market share decreases occurring from 2018 a 2020 following the implementation
of access restrictions. We also observe year-on-year decreases in the proportion of citations,
although the decrease is smaller. We conclude that negotiations with Elsevier and access
restrictions have led to some reduced willingness to publish in Elsevier journals, but that
researchers are not strongly affected in their ability to cite Elsevier articles, implying that
researchers use other methods to access scientific literature.

1.

INTRODUCCIÓN

En 2014 the Alliance of Science Organizations (Allianz der Wissenschaftsorganisationen;
AWO), a union of the majority of German research organizations, established a national-level
project named Projekt DEAL (DEAL), to negotiate licensing agreements for bundled access to
electronic journals of large scientific publishers, often referred to as Big Deals (cf. Bergstrom,
Courant et al., 2014). Focusing on robust negotiations, they aim to achieve significant
improvements with respect to accessibility of contents and pricing (Mittermaier, 2022). Más
específicamente, the key objectives of DEAL are

1. To receive permanent, full-text access to the entire journal portfolio of the selected

publishers.

2. To make all articles published by authors at German institutions automatically Open

un acceso abierto

diario

Citación: Fraser, NORTE., Hobert, A., Jahn, NORTE.,
Mayr, PAG., & Peters, I. (2023). No deal:
German researchers’ publishing and
citing behaviors after Big Deal
negotiations with Elsevier. Quantitative
Science Studies, 4(2), 325–352. https://
doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00255

DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00255

Revisión por pares:
https://www.webofscience.com/api
/gateway/wos/peer-review/10.1162
/qss_a_00255

Recibió: 11 Agosto 2021
Aceptado: 12 Febrero 2023

Autor correspondiente:
Anne Hobert
hobert@sub.uni-goettingen.de

Editor de manejo:
Juego Waltman

Derechos de autor: © 2023 Nicholas Fraser,
Anne Hobert, Najko Jahn, Philipp Mayr,
and Isabella Peters. Published under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
Internacional (CC POR 4.0) licencia.

La prensa del MIT

Access (OA).

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No deal: German researchers’ publishing and citing behaviors

3. To secure reasonable pricing according to a simple, future-oriented model based on

publication volumes.

Hasta la fecha, DEAL negotiations have centered on three major publishers: Elsevier, Saltador
Naturaleza, and Wiley. Between 2012 y 2020, these three publishers were collectively respon-
sible for publishing ∼53% of scientific articles with at least a single author from a German
research institution (Elsevier ∼21%, Springer Nature ∼21%, Wiley ∼12%; data according to
Dimensions). Negotiations between DEAL and Elsevier officially began in 2016, with Springer
Nature and Wiley negotiations beginning a year later in 2017. In January 2019, DEAL
announced the signing of an agreement with Wiley, fulfilling the defined negotiating
objectives by allowing full access to Wiley’s portfolio of journals for institutions represented
by DEAL (herein referred to as DEAL institutions), and automatic OA publishing of articles from
corresponding authors at DEAL institutions under Creative Commons (CC) licenses, for a fee
equal to A2,750 per published article (Sander, Hermann et al., 2019). In January 2020, a
similar agreement between DEAL and Springer Nature was signed, including the same per-
article fee equal to A2,750 (Kieselbach, 2020).

Although negotiations with Wiley and Springer Nature have now successfully concluded in
agreements, negotiations with Elsevier remain unresolved. At the end of 2016, ∼70 German
institutions1 chose not to renew their contracts with Elsevier, leading to Elsevier restricting
access to new journal issues at those institutions (and also restricting access to back catalogs
at some institutions) from the beginning of 2017 (Vogel, 2017a), although access was restored
6 weeks later (Vogel, 2017b). At the end of 2017, a further ∼110 German institutions2 decided
not to renew their contracts with Elsevier, and at the beginning of July 2018, the German
Rectors’ Conference (Hochschulrektorenkonferenz; HRK), who are leading negotiations on
behalf of AWO, announced the breakdown and cancellation of all ongoing negotiations with
Elsevier. In July 2018, authors at institutions that had canceled their contracts with Elsevier had
their access to new journal issues completely cut off (Else, 2018a). A further ∼25 institutions,
including the Max Planck Society and Fraunhofer Society,3 did not renew their contracts with
Elsevier at the end of 2018, bringing the institutions without a contract with Elsevier to more
than 200.

As Elsevier was a provider of a large proportion of research published and cited by
researchers at German institutions, negotiations and restricted access to Elsevier’s article col-
lections may have measurable effects on their publication and citation behavior. Attempts to
quantify such effects have already been made through recent survey approaches: A survey
commissioned by Elsevier4 found that 61% of researchers at German institutions agreed or
strongly agreed that losing access made their research activities less efficient, mientras 54%
agreed or strongly agreed that losing access delayed the speed with which they produce their
research output. A separate survey of 384 researchers at the Faculty of Medicine of the Uni-
versity of Münster showed an overall similar sentiment, con 66% of researchers reporting that

1 Archived webpage: https://web.archive.org/web/20191212094238/ https://www.projekt-deal.de

/vertragskuendigungen_elsevier/.

2 Archived webpage: https://web.archive.org/web/20191212094842/ https://www.projekt-deal.de

/vertragskundigungen-elsevier-2017/.

3 Archived webpage: https://web.archive.org/web/20191114074949/ https://www.projekt-deal.de

/vertragskundigungen-elsevier-2018/.

4 Archived webpage: https://web.archive.org/web/20210427160017/ https://resources.mynewsdesk.com

/image/upload/fl_attachment/sgmm6zhwdmam4ys7evvf.

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No deal: German researchers’ publishing and citing behaviors

they now require more time to acquire literature and 46% of researchers reporting that losing
access was a competitive disadvantage, yet only 29% of researchers reported that they would
no longer write or review articles for Elsevier journals5. Following the implementation of
access restrictions, a number of researchers also resigned from their positions on editorial
boards of Elsevier journals6 (Vogel, 2017C).

The situation in Germany is not unique, and breakdowns in negotiations between library
consortia and Elsevier have been reported elsewhere. In Sweden, a number of universities,
research institutes, and government agencies were cut off from Elsevier journals between
mid-2018 and the end of 2019 due to a breakdown in negotiations between Elsevier and
the Bibsam Consortium (the national-level license negotiating body for Sweden). Un
agreement was eventually signed between Bibsam and Elsevier at the end of 2019, to take
effect from January 1, 2020. A survey of 4,221 Swedish researchers carried out by Bibsam
during the time period that Elsevier journals were inaccessible found that 51% of respon-
dents were negatively affected in their desire to publish with Elsevier, y 54% had their
work negatively impacted (Olsson, Lindelöw et al., 2020). The University of California (UC)
system also had access to Elsevier journals restricted following the suspension of negotia-
tions in 2019. A poll of ∼7,300 UC affiliates (including faculty, graduate students, bajo-
graduates, postdocs, and other staff ) during this period found that 33% of respondents
reported a significant impact of the loss of access, most greatly from the health sciences
(52% reported a significant impact), but only 15% reported that it would affect their deci-
sion to publish in Elsevier journals7. In March 2021, UC announced a four-year agreement
with Elsevier, cual, por primera vez, also covers OA publication in the Cell Press and
Lancet family of journals.

In parallel to these library-led negotiations, other researcher-led protests against the busi-
ness practices of Elsevier have occurred in recent years. The Cost of Knowledge is a campaign
launched by mathematician Timothy Gowers in 2012, asking researchers to sign a statement
that they would refrain from publishing, refereeing, or doing editorial work for Elsevier. A
fecha, más que 20,000 researchers have publicly signed the statement. Sin embargo, an analysis
of the signatories in 2016 found that 38% of those who committed to not publish in Elsevier
journals actually published papers in Elsevier journals following their commitment (Heyman,
Moors, & Storms, 2016). Other protests have been made in the form of editorial board resig-
naciones; en 2015 the entire editorial board of Lingua, an Elsevier journal, resigned and formed a
new journal named Glossa with a different publisher; a similar situation unfolded in 2019
when the editorial board of the Journal of Informetrics resigned and formed a new journal
named Quantitative Science Studies. Sin embargo, in both cases, the existing Elsevier journals
continued to operate and publish new journal issues with newly established editorial boards.

en este estudio, we aim to investigate researchers’ publishing and citing behaviors after nego-
tiations with Elsevier and restricted access to Elsevier journals at DEAL institutions in Germany.
Despite suggestions from surveys that researchers were negatively affected in their desire to
publish in Elsevier journals and negatively impacted in their daily research activities, to our

5 Archived webpage: https://web.archive.org/web/20210429122105/ https://www.uni-muenster.de/ ZBMed

/aktuelles/27850.

6 Archived webpage: https://web.archive.org/web/20210427081142/https://www.projekt-deal.de/aktuelles

-zu-elsevier/.

7 Archived webpage: https://web.archive.org/web/20210518094220/ https://www.library.ucsb.edu/uc-and

-elsevier.

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No deal: German researchers’ publishing and citing behaviors

conocimiento, no empirical evidence suggesting that this has actually occurred has been estab-
liado. Específicamente, we aim to answer the following research questions:

1. Did negotiations with Elsevier and restricted access to Elsevier journals at DEAL insti-

tutions result in a change in researchers’ publishing behavior?

2. Did negotiations with Elsevier and restricted access to Elsevier journals at DEAL insti-

tutions result in a change in researchers’ citing behavior?

For both of these research questions, we also consider variability with respect to the timing of
contract cancellations of individual institutions, research disciplines, collaboration patterns,
and article OA status.

2. MÉTODOS

2.1. Data Sources

2.1.1. DEAL institutions

We collected names and contract expiration dates of 210 German universities, research insti-
tutions, higher education institutions, and regional libraries that had their access to Elsevier
articles restricted as part of the DEAL negotiations, using publicly available lists of institutions
that cancelled their contracts with Elsevier in 20168, 20179, y 201810 available on the DEAL
website. We manually mapped institutions to identifiers in the Global Research Identifier
Database (GRID), using the available search interface on the GRID website. Del 210 insti-
tution names provided, 209 were matched to a GRID identifier, with the exception of “HS
Villingen-Schwenningen,” for which we were unable to unambiguously determine the correct
GRID identifier. The list extracted from the Project DEAL website contained 10 individual
records for each campus associated with the Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State Univer-
sity (“Duale Hochschule Baden-Württemberg / DHBW”), but all campuses are collectively
associated with a single identifier in the GRID database (“grid.449295.7”). The Max Planck
Society and Fraunhofer Society were listed individually on the DEAL website, but both are
umbrella associations that consist of a number of individual research institutions. De este modo, nosotros
also extracted the GRID information for all their constituents, according to “parent-child” rela-
tionship information stored in GRID. The Helmholtz Association and Leibniz Association are
similar umbrella associations, but the lists from the DEAL website contained the names of
individual Helmholtz Association and Leibniz Association institutions; thus we limited the
data set to those contained directly in the list and did not extract information for all other con-
stituent institutions. A limitation of this approach is that we rely solely on publicly available
information of contract negotiations and cancellations; nonetheless, we attempted to verify the
information contained on the DEAL website by manually searching for press releases or other
informational web pages issued or maintained by the individual institutions that referred to
restricted access to Elsevier articles. Of the original 210 institutions on the list, we found
relevant information for 121 institutions; the information we discovered showed strong con-
cordance with the information contained on the DEAL website (p.ej., in terms of contract status

8 Archived webpage: https://web.archive.org/web/20191212094238/ https://www.projekt-deal.de

/vertragskuendigungen_elsevier/.

9 Archived webpage: https://web.archive.org/web/20191212094842/ https://www.projekt-deal.de

/vertragskundigungen-elsevier-2017/.

10 Archived webpage: https://web.archive.org/web/20191114074949/ https://www.projekt-deal.de

/vertragskundigungen-elsevier-2018/.

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No deal: German researchers’ publishing and citing behaviors

and timing of restricted access) and thus we are confident in the quality of the publicly avail-
able information.

2.1.2. Article and author metadata

Article and author metadata used in this study were derived from three main bibliometric data
sources: Dimensions, Crossref, and Unpaywall. Initially, we retrieved article DOIs, complete
author and affiliation details, fields of research, and reference lists (DOI-DOI links) for all arti-
cles with at least a single author from a DEAL institution, via the Dimensions Analytics API.
These data were retrieved in the first two weeks of April 2021. Articles were limited to those
with a publication date in years 2012 a 2020, and to “article” publication types. As the
Dimensions Analytics API only allows a maximum of 50,000 records to be returned in a single
query, we queried iteratively through each year and individual DEAL institution, using the
associated GRID identifier, and extracted details of all articles that included an author at
the respective institution. In a final step we combined all article records together and removed
duplicates (p.ej., where an article had authors from multiple DEAL institutions). Following these
steps we created a set of 892,169 unique articles (overview of distribution over time and by
publisher in Figure 1A), representing ∼2.5–3% of total global output over the same time period
(Figura 1B).

Figure 1C shows the distribution of the number of authors per article in our original data set.
The figure shows that a high proportion of articles contain a large number of authors. In cases
of articles written by large teams or consortia, the contribution of DEAL authors to the writing of
the article or subsequent publication strategy may be small. Figure 1E shows the proportion
of articles in our original data set in each year further subdivided by authorship types: “DEAL
First Author” refers to articles where the first author is from a DEAL institution but the last
author is not, “DEAL Last Author” where the last author is from a DEAL institution but the first
author is not, “DEAL First and Last Author” where both the first and last authors are from DEAL
institutions, and “DEAL Middle Author” where neither the first nor last authors are from DEAL
institutions. These results show that the majority of articles in our data set have a first or last
author (o ambos) from DEAL institutions, yet there exist a number of articles where DEAL
authors are only included as middle authors. Although practices for the assignment of author
order are neither clear nor consistent across disciplines (Brand, Allen et al., 2015), para el
purposes of this study, we make the assumption that the publication strategy for the article
is primarily determined by either the first or last author of an article. De este modo, as we aim to focus
on the direct behavior of researchers at DEAL institutions, we subsequently limited our data set
to articles with a first and last author from a DEAL institution (es decir., the group “DEAL First and
Last Author” in Figure 1E)11.

For each article retrieved from Dimensions, we also retrieved and parsed a complete list of
references (total number of DOI-DOI reference links: 33,652,274). An overview of the

11 An alternative approach here would have been to use “corresponding author” information rather than author
positions, because usually articles from corresponding authors at DEAL institutions are covered with the
agreements; sin embargo, an analysis of a subset of articles from 10 randomly selected institutions (N articles =
6,513) revealed that only 57% of articles contained any corresponding author information, and coverage
may be biased towards certain publishers. Of articles in this subset, we found that in 99% of cases where the
first and last authors were from a DEAL institution the corresponding author was also from a DEAL institution;
although we may remove more articles from the analysis in our approach, we do not introduce any potential
biases that may result from using incomplete corresponding author information. Mattsson, Sundberg, y
Laget (2011) found that the corresponding author is either the first or the last author in the majority of cases
(para 91% of all articles globally, and about 95% of articles from German authors), supporting our approach.

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No deal: German researchers’ publishing and citing behaviors

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Cifra 1. Properties of our initial data set of articles published by DEAL researchers extracted from Dimensions. (A) Number of articles pub-
lished per year and by publisher (arriba 12 publishers by total publication volume shown). (B) Proportion of articles in our data set as a proportion
of total global output per year (according to total number of articles indexed in Dimensions). (C) Distribution of number of authors per article
(only articles with <100 authors are shown). Note that the y-axis is on a log-scale. The dotted line refers to median number of per article (5). (D) Distribution references per article (only articles with <250 log- scale. (32). (E) Proportion by authorship type: “DEAL First Author” refers where first author from DEAL institution but last not, Last Author” a DEAL and both institutions, and “DEAL Middle neither nor institutions. f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 distribution for our original data set shown in Figure 1D. We observed an anomalously high this distribution contained either zero references or single reference. A manual investigation small random sample these articles revealed zero often represent diverse types editorial content (e.g., corrections, errata, tables content) which indexed Dimensions as “article” types. Articles reference abstracts, linked single journal (see, example, abstracts published journal ChemInform). In small number cases, did not contain fact a reference list page—highlighting potential weakness data Quantitative Science Studies 330 No deal: German researchers’ publishing citing behaviors source. However, broad generalization, we conclude containing refer- ences do “true” research articles, focus this study12. We thus decided remove these source uncertainty set for subsequent analyses. We discovered major inconsistency availability published by American Chemical Society (ACS). While multiple present almost all articles ACS before 2018, majority items publication year 2018 and later had no associated them13. therefore exclude all items associated publisher analysis. Following removal without authors, ref- erences reference, ACS, final Dimen- sions was reduced 397,420 (45% set). For determining subject classifications, used “Fields Research” (FOR) scheme available Dimensions, itself based Australian New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC) system. classification scheme consists 22 divisions at the upper level. Unlike systems other bibliometric databases, classify articles level, classifies document level using a text-based approach. Where information insufficient, falls back to journal-level classification. Some initial discussion strengths weaknesses the Dimensions approach has been conducted Bornmann (2018), Herzog Lunn (2018). (2018) noted inaccuracies his own pub- lication record Dimensions. improvements system have since been implemented reported increase precision recall the method August 2019. Article records were matched Crossref (for of Elsevier versus non-Elsevier content, using member ID Elsevier, 78) Unpay- wall determination OA status). Matching through exact matching of DOIs: 99.7% 99.8% subsequently matched Unpaywall, respectively. an openly available database snapshot (Crossref, 2021) contains records registered until January 7, 2021. Relevant metadata fields parsed applying rcrossref parsers (Chamberlain, Zhu et al., 2020), following same documented Jahn, Matthias, Laakso (2022). To reduce computation time storage demands, Crossref data subsequently matching limited registered after 1, 2008 (issued_date). As 2012 onward, will affect 12 Unpaywall also provides indicator editorial content (defined their schema “is_ paratext”) prevalence keywords titles “editorial board” “front cover”). Our method identifies larger “nonresearch” than (12,284 961), of the 961 identified removed via method. 13 Among 30 largest publishers set, only one items indexed having any them 2018 onwards. this occurs crucial analysis, it cutoff access many institutions. Manual inspec- tion showed 100 LAST or no 42 indeed similiar paratexts. remaining items reviews lists webpage paywalled seemed be “true” articles. Most ACS-items set did Crossref. Quantitative Studies 331 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : >1 refer-
ence, and publishers other than the ACS). The total number of articles published per year
increased during this period, de 37,156 articles in 2012 a 51,144 articles in 2020. In com-
parison, the number of articles published in Elsevier journals increased from 9,401 articles in
2012 a 11,651 articles in 2016, and subsequently decreased to 10,623 articles in 2020. En
terms of Elsevier’s market share of DEAL articles (Figura 2B), the years 2013–2015 show a
trend of relatively small YOY market share gains (<0.6% per year), with Elsevier’s market share reaching a peak of 26.3% in 2015. Subsequent years were characterized by a trend of larger market share losses, resulting in a final market share of 20.8% in 2020. These trends support the hypothesis that the desire of researchers at DEAL institutions to publish in Elsevier journals has been diminished following the start of negotiations in 2016. The large drop in the number of articles published with Elsevier in 2018 (10,962 compared to 11,457 in 2017) and the corresponding YOY market share loss of −1.2% indicate that access restrictions in mid- 2018 might have been a catalyst for this development. The biggest YOY market change appears in 2020 (−1.6%); however, this is mainly the result of a large increase in the total number of publications, which was not matched by publications in Elsevier journals. It is important to note that these results reflect the numbers and proportions of articles published in journals, but do not necessarily reflect article submission dynamics: Articles take many months to proceed through peer-review and publication processes (and these processes are generally faster in STM fields versus social sciences/arts/humanities/economics fields; Björk & Solomon, 2013), and acceptance/rejection rates may not have remained static or proportional over time. Figure 2C shows changes in the proportion of articles from each individual DEAL institu- tion that are published in Elsevier journals. Patterns broadly reflect those shown in Figures 2A and 2B, with the proportion of articles in Elsevier journals remaining relatively static from 2012 to 2016, and subsequently declining. Interestingly, a small number of DEAL institutions appear to publish 100% of their articles in Elsevier journals—upon inspection we find that these reflect institutions with extremely low publication volumes (<10 articles in a given year). A similar picture can be seen on the other side of spectrum: DEAL institutions with 0% of articles Elsevier journals tend to have low total numbers publications that year (<5 articles). However, there are some exceptions up 59 publica- tions year, which none published journals. The majority these insti- tutions Max Planck Institutes, or nonuniversity research focus in Physics Natural and Computer Sciences. Figure 2D shows number Elsevier versus non-Elsevier by aggregated over entire time period 2012–2020. Results show general consistency proportion published in between large small institutions; however, sizes also sizeable variation. For example, Charité—University Medicine Berlin RWTH Aachen University both order ∼15,000 2012 2020, yet only ∼20% Charité were compared to ∼31% RWTH. Such differences may reflect different focuses of individual institutions: has strong biomedical focus, while RWTH is a technical university historically natural sciences, technology, and engineering. Quantitative Science Studies 333 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : >10,000 articles in total are labeled.

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3.1.1. Publishing behavior with respect to contract expiration date

Our data set contains three groups of DEAL institutions whose contracts with Elsevier expired
at different time points: one group at the end of 2016 (norte = 74), one at the end of 2017 (norte =
110), and one at the end of 2018 (norte = 204). En figura 3 we explore differences in publishing
patterns between these different groups, to examine whether those whose contracts expired
earlier showed different effects to those whose contracts expired more recently. All three
groups grew in total publication volume between 2012 y 2020; the largest group by pub-
lication volume was those whose contracts expired in 2017, and the smallest those whose
contracts expired in 2018. With respect to the share of articles published in Elsevier journals,
all three groups display similar dynamics with an overall gain in Elsevier’s market share
entre 2012 y 2015, and an overall loss between 2016 y 2020, although the exact
magnitude and patterns of YOY gains and losses differs between each group. Between 2015
y 2017 (es decir., two years prior to the access restrictions in 2018), Elsevier’s market share chan-
ged by −1.9%, −1.7%, and −2% for the group whose contracts expired in 2016, 2017, y
2018, respectivamente; the rate of market share losses increased for all three groups between 2018
y 2020 (es decir., two years following the access restrictions in 2018) to −2.2%, −3.2%, y
−3.3%. De nuevo, this points to a declining trend which is accelerated by the access restrictions
to Elsevier journals. A reason for the relatively homogeneous behavior across all three groups
may be that although the contracts expired at different times, the time at which access to Else-
vier was restricted was relatively similar across all DEAL institutions; those whose contracts
expired at the end of 2016 y 2017 lost access in July 2018 (not including a brief 6-week
period at the beginning of 2017), while those whose contracts expired at the end of 2018 lost
access from the beginning of 2019 onward.

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Cifra 3. Changes in publishing behavior of DEAL researchers, 2012–2020, dependent on year of contract expiration with Elsevier. (A) Total
number of articles published by DEAL researchers in Elsevier and non-Elsevier journals. (B) Year-on-year ( YOY) change in Elsevier’s market
share of articles published by DEAL researchers.

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No deal: German researchers’ publishing and citing behaviors

3.1.2. Publishing behavior with respect to research disciplines

A complicating factor in our data set is that we have included articles covering multiple
research disciplines; we have already shown in Figure 2D that variation in publishing pat-
terns exists on the institutional level, which may be a consequence of the individual insti-
tutions’ research focuses. A recent analysis of the effect of the agreements made between
DEAL and Springer Nature, and DEAL and Wiley (Haucap, Moshgbar, & Schmal, 2021),
chose to focus on a single discipline, Chemistry, with the justification that

Manuscript turnaround times differ substantially between different fields of science and
are rather long in some disciplines such as economics (ver, p.ej., Ellison, 2002). Por eso,
the vast majority of articles published in economics journals in 2019 y 2020 will have
been submitted before the DEAL agreements were announced. Por lo tanto, our analysis
focuses on the field of chemistry which has much faster turnaround times so that we can
expect the DEAL agreements to already have at least some impact.

Our analysis covers a longer time period than that of Haucap et al. (2021), and we assess
effects covering the entire time period in which negotiations with Elsevier began in 2016,
the time at which access was restricted in July 2018, and two subsequent publication years
thereafter until the end of 2020. We therefore feel justified in including a broader range of
disciplines in our approach with longer publishing timelines than chemistry. Sin embargo, nosotros
have also analyzed changes at the level of individual disciplines (es decir., Dimensions Fields of
Investigación). A visualization of yearly developments of publication volumes, Elsevier’s market
shares, and YOY market share changes for all 22 disciplines can be found in the (updated)
Supplementary material archived on Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4771575). Como
the discipline-specific analysis did not show any clear patterns, we do not include the
corresponding figures here.

En general, patterns of publishing behavior for individual research disciplines display a
higher degree of fluctuation than our overall analysis with all disciplines aggregated (likely
due to smaller sample sizes). Most disciplines show overall growth in the total number of
articles published over the time frame of our analysis, although publication volumes in
some disciplines appear to have decreased or reached a plateau in recent years (p.ej.,
Chemical Sciences, Physical Sciences). The results also reveal variation in the tendency
of authors to publish in Elsevier journals between disciplines: Aggregated over the entire
period between 2012 y 2020, the discipline with the highest proportion of articles pub-
lished in Elsevier journals is Economics (41.9%), and the lowest proportion is in Philosophy
and Religious Studies (5.5%). En 19 del 22 disciplines, Elsevier lost overall market share
entre 2012 y 2020; the largest losses are reported in Earth Sciences (−14.6%),
Idioma, Communication and Culture (−13%), Chemical Sciences (−12.4%), Agricultural
and Veterinary Sciences (−11.5%), and History and Archaeology (−11.4%); conversely,
three individual disciplines showed market share gains over the same time period (Eco-
nomics, +2.8%; Commerce, Management, Tourism and Services, +4.5%; Tecnología,
+5.8%). Sin embargo, the patterns of YOY growth/losses in Elsevier’s market share for individ-
ual disciplines vary significantly and we do not observe any consistent trends that can be
clearly attributed to negotiations or the access restrictions in 2018; solo 10 del 22 dis-
ciplines showed greater market share losses following negotiations or the access restric-
ciones. We point out that the results obtained for Chemical Sciences have to be interpreted
with caution, as we excluded a major publisher (ACS) for this discipline in our analysis
(Sección 2 for details).

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No deal: German researchers’ publishing and citing behaviors

3.1.3. Publishing behavior with respect to collaboration patterns

Another potential confounder of our overall results in earlier sections relates to that of collab-
oration behavior. An article written solely by researchers at DEAL institutions may have a dif-
ferent publication strategy compared to one written in an internationally collaborative project,
where international colleagues may be less knowledgeable of Elsevier negotiations and access
restricciones, or less disturbed in their daily research activities. Cifra 4 shows changes in pub-
lishing behavior with respect to collaboration status. We classified articles into four distinct
collaboration classes: “Single author,” referring to articles published by only a single
researcher; “DEAL collaboration,” referring to articles with multiple authors where all authors
of the article are based exclusively at DEAL institutions; “National collaboration,” referring to
articles where some authors are based at DEAL institutions and others at non-DEAL institutions
within Germany; and “International collaboration,” referring to articles where some authors
are based at DEAL institutions and others at institutions outside of Germany. Note that for
all of these classes, the first and last authors (or the single author) always have an affiliation
at a DEAL institution. For all of the collaborative classes (es decir., ignoring the single-author class)
the minimum number of authors per article was two, the median numbers of authors were
tres, six, and six for DEAL collaborations, national collaborations, and international collab-
orations, respectivamente, and the maximum numbers of authors were 68, 48, y 729 for DEAL
collaborations, national collaborations, and international collaborations, respectivamente.

En general, most publications in our data sets are produced in DEAL collaborations or inter-
national collaborations, while the number of articles published by single authors and in other
national collaborations is comparatively small. The number of single-author articles has
remained relatively static over time, only increasing from 4,135 en 2012 a 4,892 en 2020.
With respect to DEAL-only collaborations, the total number of published articles grew from
18,121 en 2012 a 20,962 en 2016, but subsequently plateaued or even slightly declined, con
20,935 articles published in 2020. En comparación, the number of articles published as national

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Cifra 4. Changes in publishing behavior of DEAL researchers, 2012–2020, dependent on collaboration status. “Single author” refers to
articles that are authored by a single researcher, “DEAL collaboration” refers to articles with multiple authors, where all authors are based
exclusively at DEAL institutions, “National collaboration” refers to articles where some authors are based at DEAL institutions and others at
non-DEAL institutions within Germany, and “International collaboration” refers to articles where some authors are based at DEAL institutions
and others at institutions outside of Germany. (A) Total number of articles published by DEAL researchers in Elsevier and non-Elsevier journals.
(B) Year-on-year ( YOY) change in Elsevier’s market share of articles published by DEAL researchers.

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No deal: German researchers’ publishing and citing behaviors

collaborations and international collaborations grew substantially from 2012 a 2020 (de
2,761 a 5,060 for national collaborations, y 12,139 a 20,257 for international collabora-
ciones). The findings suggest that, con el tiempo, DEAL researchers are transitioning towards a more
collaborative research environment, particularly with respect to increasing collaborations with
international partners, which echoes similar trends observed across Europe (Kwiek, 2021).

In terms of Elsevier’s market share, single-author articles show a general long-term trend
towards a market share loss over time (from overall market shares of 20.9% en 2012 a
14.2% en 2020), albeit punctuated by two YOY market share gains in 2014 y 2019. El
largest YOY losses appear in 2016 (−2%) y 2018 (−2.3%), the years of start of negotiations
and access restrictions, respectivamente. All three collaborative groups also display overall losses
entre 2012 y 2020 (from overall market shares of 27.8%, 25.5%, y 23.1% en 2012, a
23%, 20%, y 20.3% en 2020 for DEAL collaborations, national collaborations, and interna-
tional collaborations, respectivamente), yet the patterns and timing differ somewhat between
different collaboration groups. The share of articles published in Elsevier journals as DEAL
collaborations decreased relatively steadily from 2016 a 2020, with the steepest decreases
en 2018 ( YOY market share loss of −1.8%) and in 2020 (−1.9%). En comparación, the market
share of articles published as national collaborations shows only slight fluctuations until 2016
and began to decrease in 2017, and the overall market share decrease for articles published as
international collaborations between 2016 y 2020 was punctuated by a very small YOY
decrease of only −0.1% in 2018.

3.1.4. Publishing behavior with respect to OA status

Between 2010 y 2018 the proportion of articles authored by all researchers at German insti-
tutions that were made OA increased dramatically, de 27% en 2010 a 52% en 2018 (Hobert,
Haupka, & Najko, 2021). We also aimed to determine whether the restriction of access to
Elsevier journals had an effect on the OA publishing behavior of DEAL researchers in Elsevier
journals, where we speculate that increased awareness of access issues, and motivation to
ensure accessibility for colleagues, would motivate DEAL researchers to publish articles under
OA publishing models. Articles were classified into OA categories following the same schema
used by Unpaywall: Broadly, “Gold” refers to articles published in fully OA journals, “Hybrid”
to articles published under an OA license in an otherwise subscription-based journal, “Green”
to articles that have been made available in an OA repository but access to the publication in
the journal is restricted, and “Bronze” to articles that are freely accessible on the publisher’s
website but are not published under an OA license. All articles that are not freely accessible
are classified as “Closed.” An important point for the analysis of OA shares is that our data set
measures OA availability at the time of measurement (in our case, Febrero 2021), and so OA
shares do not necessarily reflect the OA status of an article at the time of its publication (p.ej.,
an article could transition from Closed to Green several years after publication if a version is
deposited to an OA repository after an embargo period).

OA publishing patterns of DEAL institutions shown in Figure 5 broadly agree with the find-
ings of Hobert et al. (2021), which focused on a larger number of German universities and
nonuniversity research institutions. We find that the total proportion of OA articles (incluido
all OA categories analyzed) published by DEAL researchers grew from 41.5% en 2012 a
68.7% en 2020, compared to a growth in OA articles of 27% en 2010 a 52% en 2018 reported
by Hobert et al. (2021). The strong growth of OA at DEAL institutions is driven largely by the
growth of Gold OA from 2012 (4,544 artículos) a 2020 (15,940 artículos), and of Hybrid OA in
particular from 2018 (3,016 artículos) a 2020 (14,163 artículos). The strong increase in Gold OA
can be attributed mainly to the growth of MDPI and Frontiers as well as a larger number of

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No deal: German researchers’ publishing and citing behaviors

Cifra 5. Changes in publishing behavior of DEAL researchers, 2012–2020, dependent on OA status. (A) Total number of articles published
by DEAL researchers in Elsevier and non-Elsevier journals. (B) Year-on-year ( YOY) change in Elsevier’s market share of articles published by
DEAL researchers.

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smaller OA publishers in recent years, whereas the increase in Hybrid OA is driven almost
exclusively by climbing numbers of publications with Springer Nature and Wiley15, dónde
agreements were obtained (see also Haucap et al., 2021).

With respect to publishing patterns in Elsevier journals, the growth of OA has been rela-
tively moderate compared to the overall picture in Germany: De 2012 a 2020 the total
proportion of DEAL articles published in Elsevier journals that were made OA increased only
de 25.2% a 36.8%. Regarding individual OA categories, we observe the largest changes
occurring from around 2014 onwards in Elsevier journals: The number of Gold articles
increased from 950 articles in 2014 a 1,497 articles in 2020, and the number of Hybrid arti-
cles increased from 681 articles in 2014 a 1,188 articles in 2020. In terms of market share, el
most prominent feature is that of YOY losses for Elsevier in the Hybrid OA market share of
>5% in consecutive years in 2019 y 2020; sin embargo, this appears to be driven more by
the surge of Hybrid OA publishing in other venues rather than a reduction in the volume of
Hybrid OA published by Elsevier (which is also reflected in the large gain of market share
(+9.7%) for Elsevier of closed articles in 2020). Another interesting feature is the growth of
Green OA in Elsevier journals in 2020 (+5.8% market share), suggesting that an increasing
proportion of researchers publishing in Elsevier journals are depositing their work to OA repos-
itories in comparison to across all publishers as a whole. Bronze OA will not be discussed
separately here, as the decision for Bronze OA is made on the side of the publisher, not the
author, and hence it is not influenced by changes in author’s publishing choices.

3.2. Citing Behavior of DEAL Researchers

A number of studies have found a citation advantage of OA publications over their closed-access
counterparts (cf. Cervecero, Priem et al., 2018 or Fraser, Momeni et al., 2020), with the implication
that having access to articles makes them easier to read and download and ultimately more likely

15 Figures displaying number of articles published per year and OA category and by publisher (arriba 10 pub-
lishers by total publication volume in the respective OA category shown) can be found in the Supplementary
material on Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4771575).

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No deal: German researchers’ publishing and citing behaviors

to be cited. If this were true, we would expect that restricting access to a set of articles would have
the opposite effect (es decir., reduce their ability to be cited). We therefore aimed to investigate the
effect of Elsevier access restrictions on DEAL researchers’ citing behavior, using a set of
16,298,286 references (DOI-DOI links) from articles authored by DEAL researchers (limited to
articles where the first and last author was at a DEAL institution, articles that contained more
than a single reference, and articles not from the ACS: See Section 2 for details).

A complicating factor in the analysis of citing behavior is that there exists time variation in
both the year of publication of an article and the publication year of the articles they cite (es decir.,
articles may cite other articles published in any prior year). An overview of citing dynamics for
our data set of DEAL articles is displayed in Figure 6, where we show the mean number of
citations per article made to Elsevier or non-Elsevier articles, as a function of citing year (dónde
citing year refers to the difference in years between the publication date of the citing article
and the publication date of the cited article). An important point for this section is that we
study the problem in an inverse way to the majority of citation studies: We analyze outgoing
rather than incoming citations. Nonetheless our results display similarly typical dynamics (ver,
p.ej., Parolo, Pan et al., 2015): Articles in our data set cite relatively few articles published in
the same year (presumably because citing articles must first be written and proceed through
the lengthy peer-review process), and the number of cited articles peaks in citing years 2–3,
and subsequently slowly declines over the following years.

For the purposes of the following analyses, we make the assumption that citing behavior in
response to Elsevier access restrictions is most likely to change for recent citations, which we
define as citations with a citation age less than or equal to 2 años. This assumption is based on
the fact that access restrictions affected new journal issues at all DEAL institutions, while only a
subset of DEAL institutions also lost access to their back catalog of articles (Vogel, 2017a). Nosotros
may therefore reasonably expect that authors who have had access restricted to Elsevier jour-
nals post-2018 either still have access to the older back catalogs, or may have saved older
articles locally (p.ej., in reference management software) during the time when access was still

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Cifra 6. Citing dynamics for articles published by DEAL researchers. Lines show the evolution of
the mean number of citations made to Elsevier or non-Elsevier articles as a function of citing year.
Thick lines represent the overall mean; thin lines represent articles from individual publication
años.

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No deal: German researchers’ publishing and citing behaviors

disponible. Por eso, we restrict the citation analyses to citations with a citation age less than or
equal to 2. For assessing changes in citing behavior, we define three related metrics of mea-
surement in similar way to our analysis of publishing behavior: the proportion of articles pub-
lished by DEAL researchers that cited any article in an Elsevier journal; the total number of
citations made to articles in Elsevier versus non-Elsevier journals from articles published by
DEAL researchers; and the annual change in the absolute proportion of citations made to arti-
cles in Elsevier journals from articles published by DEAL researchers (cual, for the purposes
of this analysis, we will term as Elsevier’s “market share” of citations).

The overall results of citing behavior of DEAL researchers’ between 2012 y 2020 son
como se muestra en la figura 7, as well as citing behavior for individual institutions. All results are based
on a maximum citation age of 2 años. Figure 7A shows the proportion of articles published in
a given year that cite at least a single Elsevier article. En general, the proportion of articles that
have cited an Elsevier article has remained relatively constant over time, fluctuating around a
significado de 57.4%. Figure 7B shows that the total number of citations largely echoes trends of the
number of articles published in the same year (Figura 2A); sin embargo, while the total number of
Elsevier articles published by DEAL researchers decreased from 2015 a 2020 (Figura 2A), el
number of citations made to Elsevier articles continued to rise, de 77,542 citations in 2016
a 93,035 citations in 2020, although this is largely driven by the large single-year peak in
2020. The result of these patterns is that over the entire time period of our analysis, Elsevier’s
market share of citations from DEAL researchers increased slightly from 23.4% en 2012 a 24%
en 2020, with a prominent gain in market share in 2018 (+0.6%) and the largest market share
loss occurring in 2020 (−0.6%). The losses of market share in 2019 y 2020 are consistent
with an expectation that reduced access to Elsevier articles post-2018 would have reduced the
ability of researchers to cite those articles; sin embargo, in comparison to market share losses in
publishing volume over the same time period (−2.7%), the loss of market share of citations
(−0.9%) is relatively moderate.

Figures 7D and 7E display citing behavior at the level of individual institutions. En general, el
proportion of citations made to articles in Elsevier journals reflect the same patterns of pub-
lishing behavior as observed in Figures 2C and 2D—the proportion of citations made to arti-
cles in Elsevier journals gradually increased from 2012 a 2018, and small decreases were
noted in 2019 y 2020. Aggregated over the entire 2012–2020 period, we find little evidence
of size-related effects: Large research institutions generally cite articles in Elsevier journals in
similar proportions to small research institutions (Figura 2E), although some variation between
individual institutions exists.

3.2.1. Citing behavior with respect to contract expiration date

As with our analysis of publishing patterns (Cifra 3), we also analyzed the citing behavior of
DEAL researchers dependent on the contract expiration date of their institution with Elsevier
(Cifra 8). The results show relatively homogeneous behavior between the different groups
and reflect the overall results from Figure 7. One prominent feature, sin embargo, is a YOY market
share loss of −1.5% in 2020 for the group whose contracts with Elsevier expired in 2018; en
comparación, the groups whose contracts expired in 2016 y 2017 show only relatively small
losses for the same year (−0.3% and −0.7%, respectivamente).

3.2.2. Citing behavior with respect to research disciplines

We also analyzed how citing behavior varied with respect to individual research disciplines
(Dimensions Fields of Research). Full results for all 22 research disciplines are available in the
Supplementary material archived on Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4771575).

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No deal: German researchers’ publishing and citing behaviors

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Cifra 7. Citing behavior of DEAL researchers, 2012–2020. All data is based on citations from articles published by DEAL researchers to
articles with a citation age of two years or less. (A) Proportion of articles published by DEAL researchers that cite at least one single Elsevier
artículo. (B) Total number of citations from articles published by DEAL researchers to articles published in Elsevier versus non-Elsevier journals.
(C) Year-on-year ( YOY) change in Elsevier’s market share of citations from articles published by DEAL researchers. (D) Proportion of citations
from articles published by individual DEAL institutions to articles in Elsevier journals. Boxplot horizontal lines denote lower quartile, median,
and upper quartile, with whiskers extending to 1.5 × IQR. Points denote individual institutions, with added horizontal jitter for visibility. (mi)
Number of citations to articles in Elsevier versus Non-Elsevier journals for articles published by individual DEAL institutions (totals aggregated
for years 2012–2020). Point size is scaled by the total number of citations from an institution. Institutions citing >80,000 articles are labeled.

We observe a high degree of variation between disciplines in their propensity to cite articles
in Elsevier journals: Aggregated across all publication years, the research disciplines with the
highest proportion of citations to articles in Elsevier journals were Built Environment and
Diseño (47.7%) and Economics (43%), and the disciplines that made the lowest proportion

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Cifra 8. Citing behavior of DEAL researchers, 2012–2020, dependent on year of contract expiration with Elsevier. All data is based on
citations from articles published by DEAL researchers to articles with a citation age of two years or less. (A) Proportion of articles published
by DEAL researchers that cite at least one single Elsevier article. (B) Total number of citations from articles published by DEAL researchers to
articles published in Elsevier versus non-Elsevier journals. (C) Year-on-year ( YOY) change in Elsevier’s market share of citations from articles
published by DEAL researchers.

of citations to articles in Elsevier journals were Physical Sciences (12.2%) and Philosophy and
Religious Studies (11.6%). We also analyzed the proportion of articles that cited at least one
Elsevier article for each individual discipline, and found the highest proportion in Environ-
mental Sciences (74.1%, aggregated across all publication years), and lowest proportion in
Philosophy and Religious Studies (15.1%). Sin embargo, these results need to be carefully inter-
preted, as the number of references per article (es decir., the reference density) also varies between
research disciplines (Sánchez-Gil, Gorraiz, & Melero-Fuentes, 2018). Articles in disciplines
where the average number of references per article is higher are likelier to cite at least a single
Elsevier article, all other factors being equal.

Given the high variability in YOY market shares for individual disciplines, it is difficult to
interpret clear long-term trends that can be attributed directly to the Elsevier access restrictions
en 2018. Sin embargo, we do find that from 2018 a 2020, the share of citations made to articles in
Elsevier journals decreased in 15 del 22 disciplines (with the largest loss of −10.2% in Built
Environment and Design)—in only seven disciplines did the share of references to articles in
Elsevier journals increase during this time (Philosophy and Religious Studies, +1.5%; Estudios
in Creative Arts and Writing, +0.8%; Agricultural and Veterinary Sciences, +0.8%; Studies in
Human Society, +0.4%; Commerce, Management, Tourism and Services, +0.2%; Tecnología,
+0.1%; Chemical Sciences, +0.1%).

3.2.3. Citing behavior with respect to collaboration patterns

Collaboration patterns may also have an influence on citing behavior. Some evidence exists
(p.ej., Milojević, 2012) that authors who collaborate more extensively use more references, y
tend towards “younger” references, compared to authors who collaborate less. Aquí, we may
hypothesize that more collaborative articles (es decir., those not solely involving researchers at

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No deal: German researchers’ publishing and citing behaviors

DEAL institutions) may receive more input into the writing and referencing process from
researchers that are not subjected to the DEAL access restrictions, and thus any measurable
effect on citing behavior should be weakened in the more collaborative groups. Our analysis,
where articles are divided with respect to the four previously defined collaboration classes
(“Single author,” “DEAL collaboration,” “National collaboration,” and “International collabo-
ration”) se muestra en la figura 9. Overall citation patterns over time are at least partially reflective
of publishing patterns (Cifra 4): Por ejemplo, the lowest number of citations are found in
single-author and national collaborations, where the number of publications is also lowest.
Sin embargo, we also observe some differences between groups that would appear to be
decoupled from publication volume alone—for example, articles published by single authors
have a lower proportion of articles that cite at least a single Elsevier article (38%, aggregated
over all years) compared to articles published from DEAL collaborations (56%), national col-
laborations (65%), or international collaborations (62%). Curiosamente, in terms of the total pro-
portion of citations made to Elsevier articles, all four groups are relatively closer, con 22% de
citations from single authors, 25% from DEAL collaborations, 25% from national collabora-
tions and 23% from international collaborations being made to Elsevier articles (aggregated
over all years).

In terms of variation over time, in a previous section we noted the strong decrease in
Elsevier’s market share of single-author articles from 2012 a 2020 (de 20.9% a 14.2%),
compared to the more homogeneous publication behavior of the three collaborative groups
(Cifra 4), which all displayed reduced proportions of articles published in Elsevier journals
de 2016 a 2020. The evolution of citing behavior, sin embargo, does not appear to follow the
same patterns—in particular, for single-author papers, we observe a long-term increase in the
proportion of citations made to Elsevier articles (de 20.7% en 2012 a 21.9% en 2020),

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Cifra 9. Citing behavior of DEAL researchers, 2012–2020, dependent on collaboration status. “Single author” refers to articles that are
authored by a single researcher, “DEAL” collaboration’ refers to articles with multiple authors, where all authors are based exclusively at DEAL
institutions, “National collaboration” refers to articles where some authors are based at DEAL institutions and others at non-DEAL institutions
within Germany, and “International collaboration” refers to articles where some authors are based at DEAL institutions and others at institu-
tions outside of Germany. All data is based on citations from articles published by DEAL researchers to articles with a citation age of two years
or less. (A) Proportion of articles published by DEAL researchers that cite at least one single Elsevier article. (B) Total number of references in
articles published DEAL researchers to articles published in Elsevier versus non-Elsevier journals. (C) Year-on-year ( YOY) change in Elsevier’s
market share of references in articles published by DEAL researchers.

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opposite to the trends found in publishing behavior for the same group. Articles published by
DEAL collaborations cited proportionally more Elsevier articles year-on-year between 2012
y 2018, and subsequently less in 2019 y 2020 (including a −1.1% YOY market share
change in 2020). The picture from the national and international collaboration groups is less
consistent: Por ejemplo, the proportion of citations to articles in Elsevier journals from national
collaborations fluctuated in several years by >1%, but without a clear trend over time, y
variations in international collaborations tend to be less pronounced, with the exception of
an increase of 0.9% en 2018. Changes in citing behavior do not appear to reflect similar
dynamics of publishing behavior between different collaboration groups: Of all groups, solo
articles published by DEAL collaborations show a decrease in the proportion of Elsevier cita-
tions concomitant with access restrictions beginning in 2018, while in other groups we do not
find strong evidence for consistent changes in citing behavior of Elsevier articles over time.

3.2.4. Citing behavior with respect to OA status

In a previous section we analyzed the publishing behavior of researchers at DEAL institutions
with respect to the OA status of the articles that they published. Aquí, we also consider the
citing behavior of researchers at DEAL institutions with respect to OA status, with the differ-
ence that OA status refers to that of the cited article rather than the published article; that is to
decir, we aim to determine whether researchers preferentially cite OA (or certain types of OA)
articles over closed articles, and how these patterns have changed over time with respect to
articles published in Elsevier journals. Elsevier access restrictions may have hindered the abil-
ity of researchers to access (and therefore cite) artículos; sin embargo, OA articles would have
remained accessible. En este caso, a reasonable expectation would be that the proportion of
citations to OA articles in Elsevier journals would have been greater after 2018 compared to
those of closed articles. The main results are shown in Figure 10.

In Figure 10A, we show the proportion of articles that cite an Elsevier article, as a function
of OA type of the cited article; as an example, we observe that 45.9% of all articles published

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Cifra 10. Citing behavior of DEAL researchers, 2012–2020, dependent on OA status of the cited article. All data is based on citations from
articles published by DEAL researchers to articles with a citation age of two years or less. (A) Proportion of articles published by DEAL
researchers that cite at least one single Elsevier article. (B) Total number of citations from articles published DEAL researchers to articles pub-
lished in Elsevier versus non-Elsevier journals. (C) Year-on-year ( YOY) change in Elsevier’s market share of citations from articles published by
DEAL researchers.

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by DEAL researchers in 2012 cited at least a single Closed article in an Elsevier journal. Encima
tiempo, the proportion of articles that cited a Closed article in an Elsevier journal decreased, con
a final proportion of 40.1% en 2020. Comparatively, the proportion of articles that cited a Gold
or Hybrid article in an Elsevier journal increased over the same time period (Gold from 0.8%
a 9.9%, Hybrid from 7.3% a 16.4%). Figure 10B shows the number of references made to
different types of OA between 2012 y 2020, and the proportion of which were made to
articles in Elsevier journals. En general, the number of references made to Closed, Verde, o
Bronze articles has remained relatively static over time, while the number of references made
to Gold and Hybrid OA has rapidly increased.

Both of these results (es decir., differences in the proportion of article citing a single Elsevier
artículo, and changes in the total number of citations) need to be placed in the context of
the general background of OA publishing trends over time. Por ejemplo, although we observe
growth in the proportion of articles citing a Gold or Hybrid OA article, the number of Gold and
Hybrid OA articles has grown over the same period (Figure 5B), and thus it is difficult to attri-
bute such trends to true changes in the citing preference of DEAL researchers (es decir., eso
researchers may consciously cite more OA articles than Closed articles). Sin embargo, what is
clear is that restricted access to Elsevier journals in 2018 did not have a disproportionate effect
on the ability of researchers to cite closed articles in Elsevier journals compared to previously;
En realidad, después 2018 we observe YOY increases in the proportion of all citations to closed articles
that were made to articles in Elsevier journals (Figure 10C), suggesting that there were no stron-
ger barriers to citing Elsevier articles than at other publishers.

4. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

en este estudio, we have assessed changes in the publishing and citing behavior of researchers at
DEAL institutions in Germany following negotiations and access restrictions to Elsevier jour-
nals in 2018.

In terms of publishing behavior, we found that Elsevier’s market share of articles published
by DEAL researchers has fallen from a peak of 26.3% en 2015 a 20.8% en 2020. This is in line
with the hypothesis that negotiations negatively affected researchers in their desire to publish
in Elsevier journals, a trend which seems to be accelerated by the access restrictions starting in
mid-2018: The largest YOY market share losses (in excess of 1% per year) appear from 2018 a
2020. We analyzed these changes with respect to the timing of contract cancellations for indi-
vidual DEAL institutions, research disciplines, collaboration patterns, and article OA status. En
broad terms, we find relatively weak evidence for any differences in publishing patterns
depending on the timing of contract cancellations, or by collaboration status, although the
proportion of single-author articles published in Elsevier journals has strongly decreased over
the past 8 años (not limited to the period following Elsevier access restrictions). In terms of
research disciplines, we observed an overall tendency towards a long-term decrease in Else-
vier’s market share for 19 del 22 disciplines studied, but a high degree of variation exists
over time and between individual disciplines. This may partly be the result of including a
range of disciplines where publishing timelines strongly differ.

A particularly interesting feature of our results relates to that of OA publishing. Although OA
has rapidly grown in Germany in recent years, OA growth at Elsevier has been comparatively
slow—only 36.8% of all articles published by DEAL researchers in Elsevier journals in 2020
were openly available (either at the journal page, or in a Green OA repository), compared to
68.7% published in all journals. In the last 2–3 years in particular, Elsevier has lost consider-
able proportions of the OA market, likely driven by the successful conclusion of agreements

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No deal: German researchers’ publishing and citing behaviors

between DEAL and other publishers (p.ej., Springer Nature and Wiley; Haucap et al., 2021)
and transfer of articles from DEAL researchers to those venues. Journals from the born-OA
publishers Frontiers and MDPI have also gained popularity among authors affiliated with DEAL
institutions in recent years (Figura 1A), which may have acted to redistribute articles from Else-
vier journals to a wider range of competitors. Por otro lado, the market share for Green
OA increased considerably from 2016 onward, indicating that researchers might try to make
their paywalled Elsevier articles available on repositories.

In the context of previous surveys conducted in response to Elsevier’s access restrictions our
results show a surprisingly moderate response of the publishing behavior of DEAL researchers.
De 384 researchers surveyed at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Münster, 29%
reported that they would no longer write or review articles for Elsevier journals16, y 51%
of respondents to a survey by in the Bibsam consortium (in response to a similar situation in
Suecia) reported that they were negatively affected in their desire to publish with Elsevier
(Olsson et al., 2020). A diferencia de, our results show only a total decrease of Elsevier’s market
share of articles by DEAL researchers of ∼2.7% in 2019 y 2020. Continued monitoring of
the situation over the following years will provide more evidence as to the long-term effect on
the motivation of DEAL researchers to publish in Elsevier journals in light of continued access
restricciones (or alternatively, the removal of access restrictions if future negotiations result in a
successful publishing agreement between DEAL and Elsevier) and the development of new
publishing options at other publishers.

In terms of citing behavior, we found that researchers have cited proportionally fewer Else-
vier articles after 2018 than prior to 2018, but the effect is small in comparison to that observed
for publishing behavior: En general, Elsevier’s share of references (limited to “newer” references
with a maximum 2-year citation age) only fell from 25% en 2018 a 24% en 2020. Such effects
do not seem to imply a markedly reduced ability of researchers to cite Elsevier articles after
access restrictions came into place in 2018. As with publishing behavior, we investigated
these effects with respect to the timing of contract cancellations for individual DEAL institu-
ciones, research disciplines, collaboration patterns, and article OA status. Sin embargo, although all
of these units of analysis broadly agreed with the overall results, we found a lack of consistent
patterns that can clearly be attributed to the implementation of Elsevier access restrictions in
2018. With respect to OA citing behavior, where we previously noted some large-scale
changes in publishing behavior, we found that DEAL researchers are citing closed access arti-
cles in similar proportions to before the access restrictions were implemented, suggesting that
no stronger barriers to citation exist for Elsevier journals compared to other publishers.

An obvious question that arises from these results is that, if researchers do not have access to
Elsevier articles, why are they still able to cite them in such large volumes? A logical expectation
would be that if authors are unable to access an article, they should not be able to read it and
therefore not be able to cite it. This expectation is also rooted in the large number of studies
over the past 2 decades showing a “citation advantage” of OA articles over non-OA articles
(cf. Piwowar et al., 2018), implying that accessibility and the ability to cite an article are
causally linked. This question may therefore be answered by considering two related
mechanisms: first in how researchers gain access to articles, and second how they actually
cite articles in practice.

With respect to the first mechanism, authors possess a number of strategies to access articles
beyond institutional subscriptions. Sharing articles directly within informal networks of

16 Archived webpage: https://web.archive.org/web/20210429122105/ https://www.uni-muenster.de/ ZBMed

/aktuelles/27850.

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colegas (p.ej., via email) remains a permitted practice (ver, Por ejemplo, Elsevier’s guidance
page on “Sharing and promoting your article”: https://www.elsevier.com/authors/submit-your
-paper/sharing-and-promoting-your-article). Some researchers have taken this a step further by
requesting articles directly from their networks of followers on various social media websites (p.ej.,
by posting an article request containing the #icanhazpdf hashtag on Twitter; Swab & Romme,
2016). Interlibrary loans (ILL), whereby a library may borrow an article from the collection of
another library, and Document Delivery Services (p.ej., Subito) are another option through which
researchers may request articles from their institutional libraries. Sin embargo, a previous analysis
on the effect of “Big Deal” cancellations has found that changes in the volume of ILL requests
following such cancellations were usually small (Simard, Principal, & Cervecero, 2020). Interest-
ingly, in the previously discussed survey of the Bibsam consortium in Sweden, 23% of respon-
dents answered that they received access to articles through their library when denied access,
yet data on article delivery services reported no increases in ILL requests for 9 months follow-
ing their contract cancellation (Olsson et al., 2020).

Other methods that researchers may use to access articles involve so-called “shadow librar-
ies” or “pirate OA,” where articles are made available on the web with disregard to any exist-
ing copyright. Two such venues have gained widespread popularity in recent years: Sci-Hub
and ResearchGate. Of the respondents to the Bibsam survey, 26% answered that when they
could not access an article they instead sought access on ResearchGate, y 14% on Sci-Hub
(Olsson et al., 2020). A similar survey of researchers at the Faculty of Medicine of the Univer-
sity of Münster found that 46% of researchers sought articles on ResearchGate when access
was unavailable at their university17. A previous study has found that more than 50% of arti-
cles on ResearchGate are in infringement of copyright and publishers’ policies (Jamali, 2017),
which led major publishers, including Elsevier, to take legal action against ResearchGate in
2018 (Else, 2018b)18. Sci-Hub, founded by Alexandra Elbakyan in 2011, is another shadow
library with large-scale coverage: An analysis in 2018 found that it provides access to nearly
all available scholarly literature (Himmelstein, Romero et al., 2018). En figura 11 we analyze
the rates of daily Sci-Hub downloads from Germany in 2017, using freely available and geo-
coded access logs that were released by Sci-Hub (data for Germany was previously aggregated
by Strecker (2018)). The figure shows the proportion of all downloads that were made for Else-
vier articles each day. To our knowledge, no more recent data is available beyond the end of
2017 at the time of writing this article, and thus we cannot measure changes in download rates
following Elsevier’s access restrictions in 2018; sin embargo, our data do cover the brief 6-week
period that Elsevier restricted access at the beginning of 2017, during which we observe no
increase in the proportion of downloads made to Elsevier articles compared to articles from
other venues. Curiosamente, the proportion of downloads for Elsevier articles increased dramat-
ically by ∼10% in December 2017 compared to previous months, though it is not clear what
drove these increased download rates.

With respect to researchers’ citation practices, and how these may influence the continually
high citation rates of “inaccessible” Elsevier articles, a more contentious hypothesis is that sci-
entists do not necessarily read the full-text articles before citing them (es decir., they read only the
abstracts, or do not read them at all), making the issue of access obsolete. Studies on the

17 Archived webpage: https://web.archive.org/web/20210429130228/ https://www.uni-muenster.de/ ZBMed

/aktuelles/27987.

18 Legal action on the part of Elsevier and the ACS resulted, Por ejemplo, in the removal of around 200,000 files
from ResearchGate in September 2021, see archived webpage: https://web.archive.org/web
/20211001013640/https://www.researchgate.net/blog/post/a-note-on-recent-content-takedowns.

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Cifra 11. Proportion of daily Sci-Hub downloads from Germany in 2017 for Elsevier articles. Data from Strecker (2018).

frequency and patterns of misprints in reference lists have concluded that 70–90% of refer-
ences are simply copied from other articles’ reference lists (Simkin & Roychowdhury, 2005),
with estimates that only ∼20% of all authors that cite a paper have actually read it (Simkin &
Roychowdhury, 2007). We cannot determine whether this is the case for researchers in Ger-
muchos, but this may present an interesting avenue for future studies that also look at differences
in citation rates between OA and non-OA articles.

En resumen, our aim for this study was to provide first insights into the development of
researchers’ publishing and citing behaviors in the aftermath of negotiations with Elsevier
and restricted access to a set of journals from a bibliometric perspective. The results may be
important for a range of stakeholders, both within and outside Germany, involved in the nego-
tiations of publishing agreements with commercial publishers. We hope that the methodology
presented can be used as a blueprint for follow-up studies and/or long-term monitoring of
these effects over a longer period of time, as we assume that only recurring studies will be
able to reveal the true impact of the DEAL restrictions. Our study has also shown, that—in
addition to surveys that capture the perception of researchers and that rely on self-reported
data—there is a strong need for the analysis of behavioral data to gain a holistic view on
researchers’ publication and citation processes.

5. LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Our study has several limitations, which may be discussed and improved upon in future
estudios.

Primero, we rely heavily on article, author, and institutional data from a single bibliometric
database, Dimensions. Future studies may test the robustness of our results by comparing them
against results obtained through other bibliometric data sources, for example through Web of
Science or Scopus. These databases may have additional advantages in the quality and

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coverage of author role information (p.ej., more complete corresponding author information)
and article types.

A second important limitation of this study is that we consider changes in publishing and
citing behavior over time with respect to publishing timelines, rather than submission timelines.
Articles spend a significant proportion of time following submission in peer-review and publi-
cation cycles, and these timelines vary strongly by discipline; disciplines such as Business or
Economics take 18 months on average between submission and publication (Björk & Solomon,
2013). Given that our analysis period covers at maximum a period of 30 meses (es decir., to the end
of December 2020) following the introduction of Elsevier’s access restrictions in July 2018, nosotros
are likely only capturing the early effects on researchers’ behavior. Future studies should there-
fore monitor these effects over longer periods; future negotiations and any potential publishing
agreements made with Elsevier may also complicate such analysis further.

We used bibliometric data to investigate potential effects of journal cancellations. Sin embargo,
information about the OA business model and revenue streams becomes more and more
important in order to assess national licensing activities of libraries aiming for OA. In the case
of Elsevier, it is particularly interesting to know whether authors can make use of grants to pay
for publication fees. Another question is whether the open access publication would be con-
sidered as compliant by the DEAL consortium, because Elsevier publishes OA journals, cual
publish proceedings and are not listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Like-
wise, a considerable proportion of articles are made available through Elsevier’s Open Archive
Program after an embargo period. Future studies could make use of journal lists from related
agreements between national consortia and Elsevier, as well as publisher-provided invoicing
datos (Jahn et al., 2022), for an in-depth analysis of OA publication activities and potential
fuentes de financiamiento.

Además, this study looks at publication and citation numbers associated with a single
publisher, Elsevier, and compares that development to the overall development of the total
publishing market associated with German research institutions, not accounting for specific
publisher profiles and changes due to market dynamics or international developments. Future
studies dealing, Por ejemplo, with a more detailed comparison with other major publishers, o
analyses of how the publishing behavior of authors affiliated with DEAL institutions compares
to publication and citation numbers in other countries that were not affected by negotiations
and access restrictions, will provide deeper insights into the mechanisms leading to the
observed changes in Elseviers publication and citation shares.

Finalmente, in this study, we have taken a descriptive, quantitative approach to understanding
changes in researchers’ publishing and citing behavior over time. We rely solely on large-scale
bibliometric data, and have neither conducted any statistical modeling (p.ej., to test for the inter-
relation between various factors that may influence publishing or citing rates) nor attempted to
qualify these findings through other more qualitative methods (p.ej., surveys, or interviews with
investigadores, librarians, and other stakeholders) that would be needed to understand the exact
underlying mechanisms driving these changes. Authors’ publishing choices are surely much
more complex than what we provide as possible explanations for the bibliometric observations
in this study (cf. Biesenbender & Peters, 2022; Fraser, Mayr, & Peters, 2022). It is particularly
interesting that we were able to detect a strong contradiction between self-reported data and bib-
liometric data on the effect of DEAL on publishing and citing. So, we encourage such follow-up
estudios, particularly those that use a multimethod approach, to explore researchers’ knowledge of
Elsevier’s access restrictions, their effect on their day-to-day research activities, and their associ-
ated motivations for publishing (or not publishing) in Elsevier journals in the future.

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No deal: German researchers’ publishing and citing behaviors

EXPRESIONES DE GRATITUD

We are grateful to Dimensions (https://www.dimensions.ai/) for providing API access through
its scientometric research access program. We thank B. Mittermaier and the second anony-
mous reviewer for their thorough and helpful reviews.

CONTRIBUCIONES DE AUTOR

Nicholas Fraser: Conceptualización, Curación de datos, Análisis formal, Investigación, Methodol-
ogia, Software, Validación, Visualización, Escritura: borrador original, Writing—review and editing.
Anne Hobert: Curación de datos, Análisis formal, Investigación, Metodología, Validación,
Writing—review and editing. Najko Jahn: Adquisición de financiación, Administración de proyecto, Super-
visión, Writing—review and editing. Philipp Mayr: Adquisición de financiación, Project administra-
ción, Supervisión, Writing—review and editing. Isabella Peters: Adquisición de financiación, Proyecto
administración, Supervisión, Writing—review and editing.

CONFLICTO DE INTERESES

Los autores no tienen intereses en competencia. During the initial preparation and submission of this
manuscript, NF was an employee of ZBW—Leibniz Information Centre for Economics. Fol-
lowing submission, NF changed employer and is currently an employee of Digital Science.
Manuscript revisions were led by AH, and Digital Science had no input into the study at
any time.

INFORMACIÓN DE FINANCIACIÓN

This work was supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research within
the funding stream “Quantitative research on the science sector,” projects OASE (grant
numbers 01PU17005A and 01PU17005B) and OAUNI (grant numbers 01PU17023A and
01PU17023B). We acknowledge support by the Open Access Publication Funds of Göttingen
Universidad.

DATA AND CODE AVAILABILITY

Aggregated data sets presented in this manuscript, as well as all code used for the data extrac-
ción, análisis, and manuscript preparation, are available on GitHub (https://github.com
/nicholasmfraser/Projekt_DEAL) and archived on Zenodo (Fraser, Hobert et al., 2021).

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