Open Access and Other Publishing License Agreements

“News & Views: Open Access Charges – Price Increases Back on Trend”

Going into 2025, we have seen APC pricing increasing but falling back to long-term trends.

Fully OA APC list prices across our sample have risen by around 6.5% compared with 9.5% this time last year.

Hybrid APC list prices have risen by an average of 3% compared with 4.2% this time last year.

Maximum APCs for fully OA journals remain at $8,900.

Maximum APCs for hybrid journals now top out at $12,690 (up $400 from last year).

https://tinyurl.com/mpdmd7vy

Clarivate: “Our Letter to the Library Community”

After receiving feedback and guidance from our customers and partners, we would like to further clarify our intentions moving forward:

We remain unequivocally committed to preserving perpetual access to previously purchased Ebook Central titles.

We are committed to increased investment in Rialto as an ebook marketplace, enabling title-by-title ebook purchasing from publishers and other vendors.

We will work with vendors, such as EBSCO, to integrate with their book and purchasing platforms, to maximize choice and workflow efficiency for customers.

We will expand benchmark and collection development tools in Rialto, providing you with insights to more efficiently make book selection, purchase and access decisions.

To further support the changes announced:

We will extend the ability for customers to make perpetual purchases for both print and ebooks on all platforms, including Ebook Central, OASIS, Rialto and GOBI through June 30, 2026.

We reaffirm our commitment to always facilitate title-by-title perpetual access purchasing through the Rialto marketplace of ebooks from publishers and aggregators.

We will work with you and your vendors of choice to create migration toolkits, to make transitioning your workflows and profiles as efficient and seamless as possible.

We will provide the data and analytics you need, as well as regular updates and close communication with your local team.

https://tinyurl.com/9hbuheru

“An APC Trap?: Privilege and the Perception of Reasonableness in Open Access Publishing”

Four institutions from the U.S. participated in this research: The University of Colorado Boulder (CUB), the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass), the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt), and the University of Tennessee Knoxville (UTK). . . .

Grants were the largest source of APC funding across all institutions, with well over half (56%)of respondents who paid an APC using grant funding to pay for at least part of their APC (Figure 2). Eighty-six percent of respondents used grants, departments, and/or other university funding towards their APC. Overall, libraries were not a significant source of funding for paying these fees. In fact, fees were just as likely to be waived than to come from library funding sources 10% of respondents, each), and the library was ranked 5th overall out of 8 funding source options. . . .

Overall, more than two-thirds of respondents across institutions thought that fees less than or equal to US$1.5K were reasonable, with an additional 16% responding that no fees were reasonable (Figure 6).

https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14394/55542

“Opinion: A Librarian’s Summary Of, and Response to, the Clarivate Announcement”

Furthermore, the transition to subscription-only access represents more than a change in purchasing models – it fundamentally undermines the ability of academic libraries to build collections that serve their specific institutional needs. . . . As the existing ProQuest One collections have demonstrated (causing great frustration), content can be removed without library input or prior announcement. Clarivate states: “We will continue our bi-annual schedule of title removals from subscriptions in June and December. There may be occasional off-cycle removals due to legal reasons or loss of publisher rights.” . . . The loss of Evidence-Based Acquisition (EBA) and Demand-Driven Acquisition (DDA) is also likely to be another blow to institutions whose budgets do not allow for the up-front purchase of all texts on lists.

https://tinyurl.com/4wy3eyc9

“Academic Databases and the Art of the Overcharge”

To help libraries avoid price discrimination, we gathered research library pricing for three popular academic databases: SciFinder from Chemical Abstract Services (a division of the American Chemical Society); Scopus from Elsevier; and Clarivate’s Web of Science. . . .

Using this data, we will examine a selection of pricing that demonstrates the range of prices paid by libraries and compare pricing across different institutional factors. We will conclude with tips on how to use pricing data in your library’s next negotiation.

https://tinyurl.com/ycyyyhuf

Paywall: “Implementing Read and Publish Agreements at the College of Charleston Libraries”

Focusing primarily on the Read and Publish agreements with Cambridge, Wiley, and Springer Nature, this article gives insight into managing Read and Publish agreements, specifically for academic libraries with no designated scholarly communications librarians.

https://doi.org/10.1080/0361526X.2025.2471077

Clarivate Change Reactions: “Library Database Providers Clash Over Subscription Models”

Lo [Leo Lo, president of the Association of College and Research Libraries] predicted that “as libraries adjust to leasing-only arrangements, they are likely to become more selective, prioritizing high-demand or core resources while potentially overlooking materials in emerging fields, niche subject areas, or interdisciplinary research.” He also thought the change could strain the relationship between librarians and publishers, hasten a shift to open-access initiatives, or “drive libraries to negotiate more aggressively” for favorable licensing terms.

https://tinyurl.com/yahhr9kd

“Clarivate Unveils Transformative Subscription-Based Access Strategy for Academia”

The new strategy includes the introduction of two market-leading solutions that are now available.

ProQuest Ebooks offers. . . .

Over 700,000 Ebooks, across 10 core disciplines, plus additional essential interdisciplinary titles. . . .

The addition of Ebook Central Research Assistant, a powerful new AI tool designed to enhance student learning and streamline research.

ProQuest Digital Collections offers . . . .

Over 160 million primary source items complemented by over 2,500 full-text scholarly journals, more than 24,000 video titles, and 15 million audio tracks. . . .

[A]ccess to nine ProQuest One discipline solutions including Anthropology, Entertainment & Popular Culture, Global Studies & International Relations, History, Literature, Performing Arts, Visual Arts & Design. . . .

As part of this transformative strategy and following changes in demand from libraries, Clarivate will also phase out one-time perpetual purchases of digital collections, print and digital books for libraries. These transitions will take place throughout 2025, in close co-operation with customers.

https://tinyurl.com/3mtsr3kr

“California Universities and Oxford University Press Sign Landmark Open Access Agreement”

The 10-campus University of California system (UC), 20 of 23 California State University (CSU) campuses, and 30 private academic and research institutions represented by the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC) have reached a comprehensive four-year transformative open access agreement with Oxford University Press (OUP). The agreement begins this month and will provide affiliated researchers with access to OUP’s world-leading journals and support for publishing their work open access. . . .

This major agreement harnesses the resources of research institutions, private liberal arts colleges, comprehensive universities, and special libraries across California by redirecting existing library subscription funds to support authors publishing open access. The agreement enables authors at the participating institutions to publish articles using an open access license at reduced or no cost in more than 500 hybrid and fully open access OUP journals. Authors with grant funds available will pay a discounted open access publishing fee across OUP’s hybrid and fully open access journals. Authors who do not have grant funds available will be able to publish open access in hybrid journals at no cost to them.

https://tinyurl.com/f5tjynus

“Tracking Transformative Agreements through Open Metadata: Method and Validation Using Dutch Research Council NWO Funded Papers”

Transformative agreements have become an important strategy in the transition to open access, with almost 1,200 such agreements registered by 2025. Despite their prevalence, these agreements suffer from important transparency limitations, most notably article-level metadata indicating which articles are covered by these agreements. Typically, this data is available to libraries but not openly shared, making it difficult to study the impact of these agreements. In this paper, we present a novel, open, replicable method for analyzing transformative agreements using open metadata, specifically the Journal Checker tool provided by cOAlition S and OpenAlex. To demonstrate its potential, we apply our approach to a subset of publications funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and its health research counterpart ZonMw. In addition, the results of this open method are compared with the actual publisher data reported to the Dutch university library consortium UKB. This validation shows that this open method accurately identified 89% of the publications covered by transformative agreements, while the 11% false positives shed an interesting light on the limitations of this method. In the absence of hard, openly available article-level data on transformative agreements, we provide researchers and institutions with a powerful tool to critically track and evaluate the impact of these agreements.

https://doi.org/10.31222/osf.io/tz6be_v1

“Hurdles to Open Access Publishing Faced by Authors: A Scoping Literature Review from 2004 to 2023”

Over the past two decades, numerous widespread efforts and individual contributions to shift scientific publishing to open access (OA) faced a number of obstacles. Due to the complexity of knowledge production dimension and knowledge dissemination, the challenges encountered by researchers, publishers, and readers differ. While examples of such barriers exist across multiple parties, no attempt has been made to synthesize these for active researchers. Thus, this scoping review explores the barriers documented in the scientific literature that researchers encounter in their pursuit of publishing open access. After screening 1,280 relevant sources, 113 papers were included in the review. A total of 82 distinct barriers were identified and grouped into four subclusters: Practical Barriers, Lack of Competency, Sentiment, and Policy & Governance. The largest cluster in terms of barriers assigned was Sentiment, accounting for 51.2% (n=42) of all barriers identified, suggesting that perceived barriers are the strongest determinants of publishing OA, while the most frequently occurring barrier was “high article processing charges”, reported in 88 papers. Furthermore, burdens faced specifically due to the location of the researcher were identified. Understanding and acknowledging these barriers is essential for their effective elimination or mitigation.

https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/vzefj_v1

“Wiley Launches Pilot Pricing Framework to Support Equitable OA Publishing for Researchers in Latin America”

The pilot program, which began on January 21, 2025, supports authors across 33 countries in Latin America, including in Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean, to publish research in Wiley’s portfolio of nearly 600 gold open access journals. Discounts on Article Publication Charges (APCs) are applied in direct relationship to the Purchasing Power Index (PPI) value of each participating country, informed by data from the World Bank International Comparison Program. The anticipated timeline for the pilot is 12 months, with a mid-term review to inform future actions.

https://tinyurl.com/3t8kkyfv

Paywall: “Improved Open Access Support through a Popular Open Access Fund”

This paper describes results of a 2023 survey of authors who applied to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) Open Article Fund between July 2018 and June 2022. The author sought the respondents’ opinions and experiences in regard to the fund’s impact, value, and award criteria . . . also asking authors about their opinions of funder mandates and their participation in open science practices.

https://tinyurl.com/mvh7hr8d

"Math and Aftermath: Impacts of Unbundling a Large Journal Package on Researcher Perceptions and Behavior"

This study seeks to understand the effects on researchers’ work at a large research university in the wake of the university library’s shift from a near-comprehensive journals package with a single, large publisher to a selective list of individual journal subscriptions. Analyzing historical journal usage, along with turnaway and interlibrary loan trends from the years following the changes, the authors made use of structured interviews with local researchers to bring context and meaning to the quantitative data. The interviews highlighted researchers’ strategies for gaining access to literature in their fields to which the library does not subscribe, and revealed assumptions about timeliness of access, as well as relationships between library subscriptions and local researchers’ publishing behavior.

https://doi.org/10.5860/lrts.69n1.8170

"Assessing Opt-In Rates for Transformative Agreements"

With increasing requirements for open access (OA) by funders, academic libraries have begun piloting so-called “transformative agreements” with publishers. One type of agreement gives researchers at an institution read access to all content while also allowing them to publish articles OA in hybrid (and sometimes gold) OA journals without payment of an Article Processing Charge (APC). Such models often give corresponding authors from an institution the ability to opt in or out of making their article OA for hybrid journals. This article provides an assessment of two pilot transformative agreements at one large research institution that participated as a member of a consortium. It provides insight into opt-in rates overall for each publisher as well as breakdowns by disciplinary affiliation and rank of the researchers, as well as the combined impact of the agreement and other mechanisms on the overall OA availability of research at these publishers with researchers at the institution regardless of corresponding author status. The discussion includes a review of lessons learned and the overall benefits and challenges of working with such agreements.

https://doi.org/10.5860/lrts.69n1.8184

"Preparing Institutions for the Transition: Consortial Cost-Sharing Models in Transformative Agreements in Austria"

Over the past ten years, the member institutions of the Austrian Academic Library Consortium (KEMÖ) have gradually opened up their researchers’ publications to the world, one publisher at a time. By pulling their resources together, KEMÖ members have successfully converted their subscription-only agreements, for the most part, to read and publish deals in a cost-neutral manner, which include an article allocation comfortably covering the consortium’s publishing needs. However, the new business models disrupted the pre-transition status quo: the existing distribution of costs, based predominantly on institutional subscription spending, differed from the emerging institutional-level output and potential associated costs. While moving to fully article-based pricing was felt premature, the consortium decided to explore ways to make the internal cost distribution more equitable. This article presents the various cost-sharing models reviewed and the process leading to the models ultimately introduced for several transformative agreements.

https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.671

Paywall: "After the Big Deal: Data-Informed Management of Unbundled Journal Packages in a Consortial Environment"

Facing increasing costs for their Elsevier ScienceDirect bundled subscription, the 60 libraries of the State University of New York (SUNY) System restructured their large package in favor of a smaller curated list of titles and adopted a data informed approach to assess the new package. . . . Based on the experience of other consortia, the authors expected an increase in usage of subscription alternatives such as open access content, interlibrary loan, post-termination access requests, and individual article purchases. Preliminary review showed usage of Elsevier content initially dropped 50% after unbundling and then increased annually at a marginal rate. While consortia staff attempted to use a data-informed approach to evaluate titles for yearly subscription reviews and yearly package adjustments, this approach was not sustainable post-unbundling.

https://doi.org/10.1080/0361526X.2024.2435429

"What Have We Learned from Subscribe to Open?"

As we enter the 2025 renewal season, which marks the sixth year since the first S2O journals were launched, we come together here as two early S2O publishers to share our different applications of and experiences with the model: In 2020, Berghahn, of which Vivian is managing director, followed in Annual Reviews’ footsteps to become the second publisher to implement the Subscribe to Open model with their Berghahn Open Anthro initiative. EDP Sciences, of which Charlotte is director of marketing and communications, was another early adopter of the model in 2021 for several of their journals across astronomy, mathematics, and radioprotection. . . .

As of 2024, thanks to the Subscribe to Open model, over 180 journals have been able to publish entire volumes in open access, which would never have been possible otherwise because of the shortcomings of the APC models for these journals and their respective disciplines. The S2O model continues to grow, with more publishers set to launch their S2O offerings in 2025. The model is supported by a thriving cross-stakeholder S2O Community of Practice (CoP) that was formed in August 2020 by Annual Reviews and some of the earliest S2O publishers (including Berghahn and EDP Sciences), supporting libraries, funders, subscription agents, and other interested stakeholders. The CoP now has nearly 100 members (individuals and organizations alike) and meets on a monthly basis to discuss experiences, achievements, and concerns, share advice, and pool feedback.

https://tinyurl.com/mvavvvw3

"Publishers are Selling Papers to Train AIs — and Making Millions of Dollars"

[Roger] Schonfeld [VP of Ithaka S+R] and his colleagues launched the Generative AI Licensing Agreement Tracker in October. It includes information about licensing deals — confirmed and forthcoming — between technology companies and six major academic publishers, including Wiley, Sage and Taylor & Francis. Schonfeld says that the list documents only public agreements, and that there are probably several others that remain undisclosed. . . .

Some scholars have been apprehensive about deals being made without their knowledge on content they produced. To address this issue, a few publishers have taken steps to involve authors in the process.

https://tinyurl.com/56zwe54p

India: "One Nation One Subscription: Boon and Bane?"

A single-window purchasing entity, INFLIBNET, has been tasked with negotiating with the top 30 publishers out of a pool of 70+ originally identified publishers. The balance 40+ are expected to be closed in due course. . .

In Phase1, approximately 6,300 institutions and 18 million students will gain access to all the resources of the 30 publishers, at no cost. . . .

There is a budgetary allocation of around US$ 750 million for three years.

https://tinyurl.com/376k2dsa

See also: “Can ONOS Transform Indian Research?“

"Leveraging Transformative Agreements for Research Integrity "

Specifically, publishers could incorporate clauses that require the institution to identify a designated contact to handle research integrity investigations, just as they would for access-related matters like login issues or security breaches. Likewise, institutions may wish to negotiate for parallel requirements from publishers.

For example, in cases of suspected misconduct or ethical concerns related to publications, publishers could rely on designated university personnel to respond and engage with these issues directly. Additional contractual clauses could include agreed-upon investigatory procedures, such as a mutual commitment to follow COPE’s guideline on “Cooperation between research institutions and journals on research integrity and publication misconduct cases,” and penalties for failure to respond.

https://tinyurl.com/4twzs2w

"When Researchers Pay to Publish: Results from a Survey on APCs in Four Countries"

This paper provides an empirical overview of the impact and practices of paying Article Processing Charges (APCs) by four nationally categorized groups of researchers in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa. The data was collected from 13,577 researchers through an online questionnaire. The analysis compares the practice of publishing in journals that charge APCs across different dimensions, including country, discipline, gender, and age of the researchers. The paper also focuses on the maximum amount APC paid and the methods and strategies researchers use to cover APC payments, such as waivers, research project funds, payment by coauthors, and the option to publish in closed access, where possible. Different tendencies were identified among the different disciplines and the national systems examined. Findings show that Argentine researchers apply for waivers most frequently and often use personal funds or international coauthors for APCs, with younger researchers less involved in APC payments. In contrast, Brazil, South Africa, and Mexico have more older researchers, yet younger researchers still publish more in APC journals. South African researchers lead in APC publications, likely due to better funding access and read and publish agreements. This study lays the groundwork for further analysis of gender asymmetries, funding access, and views on the commercial Open Access model of scientific dissemination.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.12144

"Trapped in Transformative Agreements? A Multifaceted Analysis of >1,000 Contracts"

Transformative agreements between academic publishers and research institutions are ubiquitous. The ‘Efficiency and Standards for Article Charges’ (ESAC) Initiative lists more than 1,000 contracts in its database. We make use of this unique dataset by web-scraping the details of every contract to substantially expand the overview spreadsheet provided by the ESAC Initiative. Based on that hitherto unused data source, we combine qualitative and quantitative methods to conduct an in-depth analysis of the contract characteristics and the TA landscape. Our analysis demonstrates that research institutions seem to be ‘trapped’ in transformative agreements. Instead of being a bridge towards a fully Open Access world, academia is stuck in the hybrid system. This endows the legacy (non-Open Access) publishing houses with substantial market power. It raises entry barriers, lowers competition, and increases costs for libraries and universities.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.20224

"New Open Access Agreement Between the University of California and Taylor & Francis"

The University of California (UC) and Taylor & Francis today announced a memorandum of understanding for a four-year read and publish agreement that will make it easier and more affordable for UC researchers to publish open access (OA) articles in nearly 2,500 Taylor & Francis journals. . . .

Under the agreement, the UC Libraries will automatically cover the OA fees in full for any UC corresponding author who chooses to publish OA in Taylor & Francis and Routledge journals. Authors of articles accepted for publication in a hybrid or full OA title will have the opportunity to choose OA at no cost to them. . . .

To maximize the number of UC researchers who can benefit from the newly signed agreement, authors of qualifying articles published since January 1, 2024, will be given the opportunity to retrospectively convert their article to open access, with the OA fees fully covered. Authors who have already published OA since January 1 will be offered refunds for OA fees already paid.

https://tinyurl.com/y8zutk9m

"We Need to Rethink the Way We Identify Diamond Open Access Journals in Quantitative Science Studies"

With the announcement of several new diamond open access (OA) related initiatives and the creation of the Global Summit on Diamond Open Access, diamond OA is now at the forefront of the OA movement. However, while working on our recent Quantitative Science Studies publication and datasets, we noticed that temporarily waiving article processing charges (APCs) was a commonly used strategy by big publishers for some of their journals. In the absence of an index of diamond journals, most studies have operationalized the identification of diamond journals as a subset of gold journals that do not charge an APC. While this is a pragmatic approach, we fear that it could undermine the value of the research in understanding what we believe is more commonly understood by diamond OA. This letter discusses the need for bibliometric research to apply more nuance in how it operationalizes diamond OA beyond the absence of APCs. We call on the publishing sector to be more transparent in the costs of publishing. Ultimately, we argue that transparency and a long-term commitment to no-APC publishing are necessary for diamond OA to succeed, and that the research community needs to apply this standard when seeking to understand the model.

https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_c_00331