The latest victim of Greece’s crisis have been students and academia that lost access to electronic journals, a vital source to continue their research and studies. The Hellenic Academic Libraries Link(HEAL-Link), the Internet portal that provides scientists in many Greek universities and research institutes with access to electronic journals did not pay the subscription to its 27 publishers that provide those texts. “HEAL-Link is particularly vital to universities, which rarely have funds for institutional journal subscriptions,” molecular biologist Nektarios Tavernarakis told Nature. The educational portal suspended most of its services on July 1st because the government has not provided the funds to keep it going, according to an announcement. HEAL-Link informs you of the termination of the agreements with all publishers as of 01.07.2015 due to the inability to collect the remaining half of the budget for the current year, despite the efforts that have been made and are continued, in cooperation with the Board of Rectors and the Ministry of Education. Currently HEAL-Link is obliged to proceed with the termination of the agreements, whilst seeking to maintain access for three months (grace period), with the hope that meanwhile budget might be found. Of course this may not be acceptable to all publishers, and access might be cut immediately. The portal has come close to shutting down multiple times due to the economic crisis, but because Greece is now facing state bankruptcy scientists are not expecting funds to become available this time around. After the Greek government decided to hold a referendum asking its citizens to vote YES/NO on the bailout deal offered to debt-ridden Greece by its creditors, the Governing Council of the European Central Bank froze the level of emergency liquidity assistance to Greek banks resulting in the implementation of capital controls and fears of Grexit. On June 30, Greece missed a 1.6 billion euros debt payment in bundled options becoming the first developed country to default on its international obligations. The July 5 referendum on the terms of a proposed bail-out by the creditors could determine whether Greece will stay in the eurozone.
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