A popular OA topic in December 2015 was the current status of negotiations between the giant academic publisher Elsevier and the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU). On December 10, it was announced that the Dutch Universities and Elsevier have reached agreement in principle on Open Access and subscription.
A commentary about this agreement, written by John Bohannon and dated December 11, appeared in Science. An excerpt:
…For no additional charge beyond subscription fees, 30% of research published by Dutch researchers in Elsevier journals will be open access by 2018.
“It’s not the 100% that I hoped for,” says Gerard Meijer, the president of Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and the lead negotiator on the Dutch side. “But this is the future. No one can stop this anymore.”
Several tweets about this deal have appeared in December. One example: From Richard Poynder “In unique deal, Elsevier agrees to make some papers by Dutch authors free” https://twitter.com/RickyPo/status/675606958624415744
Another example: From Open Access Top News “Dutch universities and Elsevier reach deal over open access”
https://twitter.com/OpenAccess_Top/status/675057890458251264
There was also a good deal of interest in this tweet: “What If Elsevier and researchers quit playing hide-and-seek?”. For example, from OA Tracking Project https://twitter.com/oatp/status/677894862717358080
An excerpt from the article linked to in the latter tweet:
Publishing giant Elsevier recently made headlines with its attempts to curb sharing of its papers. When Elsevier persuaded a court to order two websites taken down, they quickly reemerged at different URLs. The story demonstrates what anyone who uses the Internet already knows: copyright lawsuits only temporarily slow sharing. They don’t prevent it.
Be openly accessible or be obscure 
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