Max Planck Society Ends Elsevier Subscription

The Max Planck Society, an enormous German research organization 14,000 scientists strong and comprising multiple research institutes, has ended its subscription to Elsevier journals, the organization announced in a statement on December 18. It did so in support of the German open-access initiative called Project DEAL, after unsuccessful attempts to negotiate an open-access agreement with the publisher. The organization’s digital library will no longer have access to Elsevier’s approximately 2,500 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, once the subscription expires on December 31.