13.03.2020
Current Transformative Agreements Are Not Transformative Position Paper – For Full, Immediate and Transparent Open Access
« In 2019, approximately 69% of journal articles published in the world appeared in journals that charge readers for access [Piwowar et al. 2019]. However, there is broad recognition of the benefits of Open Access (OA) publication, making the results of scientific research freely available to everyone. That is why many funders, libraries and universities have developed policies and principles to accelerate the transition to OA and increase options for authors seeking to publish in high quality OA venues. One example is PlanS, in which a coalition of funding organizations has come together to push for a transition to OA.Many publishers have introduced hybrid publishing models, where some articles are published in OAwhile others are only available to subscribers. These models are often considered to be problematic but tolerated as a transitional pathway towards full OA. PlanS for instance has a clear ‘no hybrid’ principle, buttolerates hybrid OA models if the publisher puts in place “transformative arrangements” for a full transition to OA within a clearly defined time-frame [Coalition S 2019].This is the basis for recent interest in so-called transformative agreements. Based on our assessment of several such agreements, we argue that they are not genuinely transformative and that their transformational potential is actually very low. (…) »
source > copernicus.org, 10 mars 2020
