In recent years, transformative agreements (TAs) have become a go-to strategy for publishers and research performing organizations aiming to open up access to research (Farley et al. 2021). These agreements promise to bridge traditional subscription-based journal models to an Open Access (OA) future (Borrego, Anglada, and Abadal 2021). But are they delivering on that promise?
AbstractTransformative agreements, also known as ‘offsetting’, ‘read and publish’, or ‘publish and read’ agreements, have shifted the focus of scholarly journal licensing from cost containment towards open access publication. An analysis of 36 full‐text transformative agreements recorded in the ESAC registry shows that ‘transformative agreement’ is an umbrella term that encompasses different kinds of contracts. We differentiate between pre‐transformative, partially transformative, and fully transformative agreements. Pre‐transformative agreements are traditional subscription licences that grant article processing charge (APC) discounts or vouchers for open access publication of a limited number of articles. Partially transformative agreements differentiate between a read fee and a publish fee to cover the processing charges of a certain number of articles. Fully transformative agreements allow unlimited open access publication of the scholarly output of the subscribing institution. In all three categories, some agreements restrict open access publication to hybrid journals, whereas others allow publication in both hybrid and gold journals. Transformative agreements are more transparent than traditional journal licences, allow authors to retain copyright, and make provisions to facilitate the management of open access workflows. It is hard to assess whether these agreements are just a temporary phase in the transition towards open access or will perpetuate the current structure of the scholarly communication system and its associated high costs.
AbstractResearch institutions across the globe attempt to change the academic publishing system as digitization opens up new opportunities, and subscriptions to the large journal bundles of the leading publishers put library budgets under pressure. One approach is the negotiation of so-called transformative agreements. I study the ‘DEAL’ contracts between nearly all German research institutions and Springer Nature and Wiley. I investigate 6.1 million publications in 5,862 journals covering eight fields in the years 2016–2022 and apply a causal difference-in-differences design to identify whether the likelihood of a paper appearing in an eligible journal increases. The effect strongly depends on the discipline. While material science, chemistry, and economics s tend to hift towards these journals, all other disciplines in my sample do not react. Suggestive evidence hints at the market position of the encompassed publishers before the ‘DEAL’ was established: Springer Nature and Wiley appear to benefit more from the contracts in disciplines in which they possessed a higher market share ex ante. The transformative vigor of these agreements in terms of publication behavior seems to be limited. It and highlights that the developments in this intertwined market require further examination.
The ongoing controversy surrounding transformative agreements, which aim to transition subscription-based journal publishing to full open access, highlights the need for large-scale studies assessing the impact of these agreements on hybrid open access. By combining multiple open data sources, including cOAlition S Journal Checker, Crossref, and OpenAlex, this study presents a novel approach that analyses over 700 agreements. Results suggest a strong growth in open access, from 4.3% in 2018 to 15% in 2022. Over five years, 11,189 hybrid journals provided open access to 742,369 out of 8,146,958 articles (9.1%). Authors who could make use of transformative agreements contributed 328,957 open access articles (44%) during this period, reaching a peak in 2022 with 143,615 out of 249,511 open access articles (58%). While this trend was predominantly driven by the three commercial publishers Elsevier, Springer Nature, and Wiley, open access uptake varied substantially across journals, publishers, disciplines, and countries. Particularly, the OECD and BRICS areas revealed different publication trends. In conclusion, this study suggests that current levels of implementation of transformative agreements is insufficient to bring about a large-scale transition to full open access.