![]() ![]() Myth: TAs are a proven way to transition the system from closed to open access Authors may feel compelled to “shop around” for a researcher covered by an agreement and invite them to be the corresponding author, whether or not this role aligns with their contributions. Researchers not covered by a TA will be required to pay an APC, apply for a waiver, or be priced out of OA publishing. Library services, such as interlibrary loan, can meet researcher needs for reading access, but there is no equivalent service under a pay-for-open-publishing model. ![]() TAs fail to create viable routes to paid OA publishing for the many researchers who do not have an institutional affiliation or are affiliated with less well-resourced institutions. uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation,” TAs reify existing inequities. 6 Instead of promoting dialogue that the Budapest Open Access Initiative stated would “share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich. In contrast to European and North American institutions, which advance TAs as equitable options, OA advocates in Latin America and Africa caution that such models will result in “further marginalizing research voices from the global south.” 5 As with article processing charges (APCs), TAs risk moving the paywall from the ability to read a work to the ability to contribute to the scholarly conversation. This creates a tiered access system to open publication for authors, potentially damaging both individual careers and the scholarly record’s integrity. To date, TAs are largely limited to research-intensive institutions and consortia. TAs fail to address the positionality of the broad range of researchers contributing to the scholarly publishing ecosystem, which these agreements aim to transform. Myth: TAs will lead to an equitable scholarly publishing ecosystem This article addresses six myths surrounding TAs to better inform libraries pursuing their OA goals. But are they? The complexity of TAs obfuscates their true cost and this model’s long-term implications remain undetermined. Some publishers and libraries market TAs as the best option for the transition to a fully open access ecosystem. 4 In R&P/P&R agreements, subscription contracts are reworked to include a reading fee, covering access to subscription content, and a publishing fee, a mechanism to make some or all outputs OA if the corresponding author is affiliated with the subscribing institution. TAs are frequently read-and-publish (R&P) or publish-and-read (P&R) agreements, though a range of models fit under the term. The model received increased attention when a consortium of national and private funders known as cOAlition S announced its support of TAs as a compliant publishing route for its grantees. 2 TAs have played a central role in its implementation. The OA2020 Initiative, through which institutions pledged to fully move to OA publishing by 2020, was based on the MPDL analysis. Rather than transforming the market, TAs shift some portion of subscription investment to funding OA without altering the overall business structure. The idea originated in a 2015 white paper from the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL), which posited that the current level of investment ($10 billion worldwide) is sufficient to fund the transformation to OA within existing publishing structures: a system in which 60% of the market is controlled by five publishers who maintain excessive profit margins. T ransformative agreement (TA) is an umbrella term used to describe contracts between institutions and publishers intended to transform the current, primarily subscription-based, journal publishing model to a fully open access (OA) model. © 2021 Ashley Farley, Allison Langham-Putrow, Elisabeth Shook, Leila Belle Sterman, and Megan Wacha Ashley Farley, Allison Langham-Putrow, Elisabeth Shook, Leila Belle Sterman, and Megan Wacha Transformative agreementsĪshley Farley is program officer of Knowledge and Research Services at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, email: Allison Langham-Putrow is scholarly communications and engineering liaison librarian at the University of Minnesota, email: Elisabeth Shook is head of Scholarly Communications and Data Management at Boise State University, email: Leila Belle Sterman is scholarly communication librarian at Montana State University, email: Megan Wacha is scholarly communications librarian at the City University of New York, email: All authors contributed equally to this work. ![]()
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