Researchers in Germany, Hungary, and Sweden have lost access to Elsevier journals as talks over subscription deals stall, Nature News reports.
A number of libraries are seeking what Nature News says are called "read-and-publish contracts" in which payments for journal access and publishing in those journals are bundled together. Germany's Project DEAL recently hammered out such an agreement with the publisher Wiley.
But talks between libraries in Germany, Hungary, and Sweden and Elsevier have been less successful, leaving researchers to try to access needed journal articles using alternative means, such as emailing authors directly or ordering the individual papers, Nature News says, adding that researchers say this is slowing down their work.
It notes that Elsevier is also in talks with the University of California library system and with Norwegian libraries, though researchers there still have access to its journal articles. The UC libraries, too, have been asking for a read-and-publish contract, but Elsevier has said in reference to those discussions last year that its current model is popular and it doesn't want to alter it.