What’s the Big Deal? Preparing for Transformative Agreements

Abstract

Background: Since the open access (OA) movement emerged more than two decades ago, libraries, publishers, funders and researchers have struggled with sustainable publishing models in the complex scholarly communication environment. Fully OA journals typically use article processing charges (APCs) to generate revenue and many other publishers have moved to this model to offer immediate OA to individual articles. With growing scrutiny on library expenses, publishers have begun to offer transformative, or Read-and-Publish, agreements, which shift payment from subscription-based reading toward OA publishing. Collection development librarians handle subscriptions (“Read”) and Scholarly Communications librarians assist researchers with grants and publishing (“Publish”). There is now an opportunity to work together in the decision-making process to gather data and analyze these agreements. Description: The library has collected usage data for subscription resources for many years and used that information to inform future acquisitions or renewals. The collection of institution-affiliated author publishing data has not previously been part of this determination, but with the growing push by publishers to sign Read & Publish agreements, we have begun creating a new process. Our ultimate goal is to develop evaluation criteria for the value and benefit of transformative agreements and propose a strategy for approaching university administration and department chairs for funding of transformative agreements. Several steps will need to be completed to reach this goal. For each vendor/publisher, we want to collect and integrate author publishing data with subscription usage data to determine the level of library interest in pursuing a transformative agreement. Author publishing data could include APC dollars paid, number of articles, and departmental affiliation. Determining how APCS are typically paid across the institution, whether by individual grant, by department, or some other fund, can provide a talking point for best ways to fund APCs. Finally, we want to determine the most appropriate ways to disseminate and promote information to the university community on any current and future transformative agreements. Conclusion: We expect several outcomes from this initiative. We will create an internal campus portal for data concerning the costs of subscriptions and OA publishing in those journals, usage of subscriptions, and any pertinent background information that could impact a decision about transformative agreements. This portal would also allow university authors to determine what publications or publishers have agreements with the university and request assistance from scholarly communications librarians in determining the best place to publish. The evaluation criteria we develop will be utilized in the decision-making process. Most of all, we expect to see an overall decrease in costs associated with subscriptions and research publishing fees.