We all agree that fully Open Access (OA) publishing is necessary, but how do we speed up the transition to full OA with a sustainable path to publishing research that provides equity and maintains bibliodiversity within the scholarly ecosystem? Enter the Transformative Agreement.
Plan S calls for all academic journals to switch to a fully OA business model. However, they acknowledge that flipping to full OA is financially challenging for many small publishers. So how do you balance the need for open science with the long-term sustainability of publishers? One strategy is to use Transformative Agreements to allow publishers and institutions to gradually shift to a fully OA environment.
What is a Transformative Agreement?
In essence, a Transformative Agreement is a contract between a publisher and a library that shifts the money libraries pay to read journals towards funding OA. The long-term goal is for traditional journal subscriptions to cease to exist. Subscriptions would be replaced by a pay-to-publish model, which allows authors to publish under a funder compliant creative commons (CC) licence.
Bristol University Press’s Read and Publish agreement
Last year Bristol University Press launched our transformative Read and Publish agreement. The terms of the agreement are simple. For an annual fee, faculty at participating universities get:
- access to all of our journals;
- unlimited Gold Open Access publishing in our 20 hybrid journals under a CC licence of their choice.
There are criteria which must be met to be eligible to publish under this agreement:
- the corresponding author has to be based at the participating institution.
- the agreement only covers research articles. Alternative publication formats such as debates, book reviews and Policy and Practice are not covered.
- you have to submit your manuscript during the dates covered by the agreement. If you submitted your article in November 2022 and the agreement runs January 2023–December 2024, you won’t be eligible.
How does this benefit the scholarly community?
Without a Transformative Agreement in place, the author would have to pay their Article Processing Charge (APC) directly. This can stretch already tight research budgets. Authors also have to deal with the inconvenience of contacting the publisher and processing the payment.
With our Read and Publish agreement, authors simply need to submit their article and tell us the name of their institution. If they are eligible and their article is accepted for publication, we contact them to set up their CC licence.
It also makes life easier for librarians. It is increasingly common for libraries to facilitate OA for their faculty, with 30 per cent of libraries managing their institution’s gold OA budget. Without the Read and Publish agreement, they have to manage multiple APC and subscription payments, often split across different budgets. Our single fee eliminates this administrative burden. We’ve also partnered with OA Switchboard to make life even easier for librarians. OA Switchboard allows librarians to quickly report the number of OA articles published under the agreement, allowing libraries to ensure that they are getting good value for money.
The publish element of our agreement is uncapped, which librarians really appreciate. Some deals offer a limited number of publishing credits. This puts the library in an awkward position where they have to decide which articles get to publish OA. With unlimited OA publishing, we can leave the libraries out of it and deal directly with authors.
Is Read and Publish sustainable and equitable?
While they are certainly a step in the right direction, Transformative Agreements like our Read and Publish agreement aren’t perfect. It could be argued that our current model, with all institutions paying the same fee regardless of research output, unfairly benefits larger and wealthier institutions. We are looking at ways to redress this imbalance.
We realise this kind of offer is unaffordable for many libraries worldwide and having it as our sole OA route could potentially marginalise some of the global research community. We aim to alleviate some of these issues with our OA waivers and discounts for researchers based in low-, middle- and high-income countries. We are also very happy to make flexible OA arrangements when needed. However, we know that more can be done.
cOAlition S has declared that it will end its financial support for OA publishing under Transformative Agreements after 2024. The next step on the route to full OA is unclear, but one thing is certain: a diverse and equitable scholarly ecosystem needs diverse and equitable routes to OA. Therefore, at BUP, we will continue to look for new and innovative ways to ensure our publications can reach their audiences to help bring about positive social change.
To find out more about Open Access, including Read and Publish, at Bristol University Press, visit our website.
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The views and opinions expressed on this blog site are solely those of the original blog post authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the Bristol University Press and/or any/all contributors to this site.
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