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Tag: Transformative Agreements

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Open access is the emerging standard for how scientific literature is published and shared. An open access publication is digital, has no fees required for access, and has no copyright or licensing restrictions. The idea is to make scientific findings accessible to all who would benefit. This is a noble goal, but the practicalities of its application can be confusing. There are a number of ways that authors and publishers can make published studies available open access. Some put the burden of payment on the author or institution that produced the research, some on the publisher, and an emerging model puts it on libraries who enter agreements with publishers for subscriptions with open access benefits for researchers at their institution.

The three most common models are green, gold, and diamond/platinum open access.  Here’s a quick breakdown of each:

Green OA - A publisher allows the author(s) to self-archive an open access copy of the article being published in one of its journals. This is generally allowed for a preprint version of the article. The author can opt to self-archive to a subject-based archive like PubMed Central, or in an institutional repository, like Himmelfarb’s Health Sciences Research Commons. To find out if a journal allows Green OA and what the specific terms are, Sherpa/Romeo is a free tool to check publisher open access policies. Learn more about how to deposit your research in an institutional repository in our video tutorial, Archiving Scholarship in an Institutional Repository.

Gold OA - The authors (or their affiliated institution) pay the publisher to allow open access to the content with an Article Processing Charge (APC). In this model, the author frequently retains copyright. The downside is the typically high expense to publish gold OA in reputable journals. Note that vanity presses and some predatory publications will fall into the gold category. Learn more about how to identify a predatory journal in our video tutorial, How to Spot a Predatory Journal.

Diamond or Platinum OA - Also known as cooperative or non-commercial open access, in this model neither the author nor the reader pays. Typically this model is used by not-for-profit publishing venues like University presses or scholarly society publications. A 2021 study estimated that there are 29,000 diamond OA journals, but only 10,000 of them are included in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and many are not indexed to make their contents findable in databases. Only about half of diamond OA journal articles have a DOI which jeopardizes future access.

The Venn diagram below developed by Jamie Farquarhson illustrates what each of the three levels means for both authors and readers.

Venn diagram with copyright retention, cost for authors and readers, and peer review for open access models.
Diagram by Jamie-farquharson - https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21598179, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=125787281

As Gold OA becomes more common, some institutions are creating funds that their researchers can use to pay for APCs. Researchers are also including these expenses in grant applications, especially for those like NIH grants that require depositing research findings and associated data in freely accessible archives. Learn more about how to include article processing charges into grants in our video tutorial, How to Include Article Processing Charges (APCs) in Funding Proposals.

As mentioned earlier in this article, libraries are starting to take on some of the burden of APCs. In what’s known as a transformative agreement, the fees paid to a publisher are transitioning from subscription access for library users to open access publishing by the institution’s researchers and authors. The library pays for both users to read for free and for the institution's authors to publish open access in the publisher’s journals. There may be limits on how many articles can be published or other price caps built in. Usually, these agreements are cost neutral meaning that the library is not saving on subscription fees. Currently, GW has  transformative agreements in place with Cambridge Journals and The Company of Biologists (Development, Journal of Cell Science, and the Journal of Experimental Biology). GW has explored transitioning to transformative agreements with other publishers.

Sources

Arianna Becerril, Lars Bjørnshauge, Jeroen Bosman, et al. The OA Diamond Journals Study. March, 2021. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4562790

Lisa Janiche Hinchliffe. Transformative Agreements in Libraries: A Primer. The Scholarly Kitchen blog, April 23, 2019. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2019/04/23/transformative-agreements/

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Image of orange buttons with Open Access logo using the letters O and A to form an open padlock in a white bowl.
"Open Access promomateriaal" by biblioteekje is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

What is Open Access?

Open access (OA) journals make content available to anyone free of charge. While traditional publishing models require readers or institutions to purchase subscriptions to gain access to published content, users attempting to access this content without a subscription will find the content hidden behind a paywall. OA articles, on the other hand, can be accessed and read by anyone without payment or a subscription. 

The two most common OA publishing models are Gold OA and Hybrid OA. Gold OA journals make all published articles available to readers free of charge. Hybrid OA journals publish OA articles that are free to all readers, as well as traditional articles that can only be accessed and read by subscribers who pay for that content. Hybrid OA journals let authors choose whether or not to make their research available as open access or to restrict access via the traditional paywall model.

Article Processing Charges (APCs)

While publishing your research as OA makes your work more widely accessible, it does come at a cost to the author. OA journals transfer the cost of publication from the reader to the author by charging authors Article Processing Charges, also known as APCs. The cost of APCs varies by journal, but the cost range from $2,000 to $5,000 for health sciences journals.

If you’d like to publish your research as OA, it’s important to consider how you will pay for APCs early in your research process. We recommend that you request funding for APCs in grant and funding proposals. Building these costs into your funding proposals will ensure that you have the necessary funds needed to cover APCs when you’re ready to publish. NIH grants and NSF grants allow for publication costs to be included in grant applications - so be sure to secure funding from the start of the research process!

To learn more about APCS, take a few minutes to watch Himmelfarb’s tutorials on Locating APCs and Including APCs in Funding Proposals!

Locating Article Publishing Charges (APCs) tutorial:

Including APCs in Funding Proposals tutorial:

APCs Waived for GW Authors!

GW currently has active “transformative agreements” with two publishers: Cambridge University Press, and The Company of Biologists. These agreements allow GW authors to publish their research as open access at no cost to authors - APCs are waived! The Cambridge University Press agreement covers nearly 50 medicine and health sciences journals. The Company of Biologist agreement waives APCs for GW authors in the following three hybrid journals:

It’s important to note that these agreements do not guarantee acceptance for publication in these journals. Manuscripts must meet the journal’s acceptance criteria. Authors must also use GW as their primary affiliation upon manuscript submission. Authors who claim another organization (such as the MFA, GW Hospital, CNHS, or the VA) are not covered under these agreements. For more information about GW’s Read and Publish agreements with Cambridge University Press and The Company of Biologist, contact Ruth Bueter at rbueter@gwu.edu.

Learn More:

If you’d like to learn more about open access publishing, check out our Open Access Publishing page of the Scholarly Publishing Research Guide. 

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