Open Publications and Transformative Publishing Agreements

Open Access is an important part of the Open Research agenda. Currently, approximately one third of articles published appear immediately and fully as Open Access. This talk will cover the different kinds of OA, and how each of the different models works in practice. It reviews the Transformative Publishing Agreements that UK universities have in place with publishers, which allow articles to be published without a per-article fee. While incorporating a representative selection of relevant critical perspectives (of which there are many), the primary purpose of the talk is to provide practical advice for academic authors.

If you’re not familiar with Open Access, it may be worth having a look at the talk on “Open Licences” before diving into this one. That talk introduces the legal infrastructure through which Open Access is supported. The key take-away is that academic publications are increasingly available under permissive legal terms, which include being free access to read.

This stands in rather stark contrast with the traditional model of academic publishing, which is funded through fees paid by people who purchase the publications. Apart from textbooks and other publications that individuals buy for their personal libraries, typically, publishers’ fees are paid through purchases and subscriptions taken up by University libraries. Indeed, getting access to a wide range of publications is one of the perks of working at a university. However, with the rise of Open Access, anyone with an internet connection can already access a wide range of books and articles for free. At least on the face of it, if published material is available for free, this significantly reduces the incentive to purchase it for a fee. Not only does this suggest the need for different business models for publishers, it also hints at the evolving role of libraries and even universities. This talk will look at some of the alternative paths forward.

A brief reminder about preprints.

Before looking at the different types of Open Access publications — which are associated with different publishing business models — it’s worth briefly refreshing ourselves about preprints (which don’t have a business model attached). A “preprint” is an article that has been uploaded to a suitable repository, perhaps at the same time the article is submitted to a journal, or, indeed, whenever the authors think that the material is ready to share with the world — even in the drafting stage if the work is happening in the open. By default, preprints are not reviewed, but they do make academic work available for public scrutiny. Most journals are happy to accept articles that have been posted as a preprint, though some do impose restrictions, so it’s worth checking the relevant policies.

Different types of Open Access publications

The primary types of OA publications are known as Green, Gold, and Diamond. While the names might sound a bit arcane, their differences between them are easy to understand.

Green

With the preprint model mentioned earlier in mind as a point of reference, Green Open Access is pretty straightforward. This model refers to sharing what’s called a “postprint” — that is, a copy of a paper which has been sent to a journal, peer reviewed, modified as required, and accepted for publication. Publishers differ as to whether copyright must be transferred to them at this stage. Accordingly, what the author may do with the “Authors’ Accepted Manuscript” depends on what rights they have. In some cases, it may be possible to make the AAM publicly available under a fully permissive open licence, but some publishers don’t allow that. For example, Elsevier requires authors publishing their accepted manuscript to attach a non-commercial Creative Commons user licence (CC-BY-NC-ND). Some journals may additionally impose an embargo period (for example, 12 months) that temporarily delays the distribution of such ‘postprints’. These restrictions allow the publisher to gather revenues associated with publishing the article using a subscription model. Once a postprint article is available, there’s no cost for the reader to access it. It’s worth noting that some journals will waive the embargo period in exchange for what’s referred to as an article development charge (ADC); and that some journals simply do not enforce an embargo period whatsoever. In principle, an ADC allows a journal to recoup costs associated with finding and organising peer reviewers and other relevant editorial work: it’s worth remembering that the peer reviewers themselves typically work for free.

Gold

Gold Open Access describes a model that’s similar to the ADC just mentioned, except that in this case, the article is published as Open Access directly by the journal itself. The author can of course archive it in a repository as well, but in this model that’s a side issue. Gold Open Access means that there’s no embargo period, and no cost for readers to view the article right away. However, there is typically a fee for authors — which typically will be covered by their institution or funder, rather than paid out of pocket. Furthermore, some publishers waive or reduce the fees for authors who cannot pay the standard charge: in the first instance this is decided by their country of residence.

Diamond

Diamond Open Access does away with fees for both authors and readers. Naturally, there are still costs involved in producing Diamond OA publications, however. These costs are typically underwritten by an academic society or charity, and may be supplemented by “suggested donations” for people submitting books or articles.

What is the status of these different types of OA?

Each of these models has its proponents. Diamond OA might sound like the best option — after all, who doesn’t like knowledge that’s free for everyone, and that is community supported? However, it may also sound like the least plausible in practice. In fact, “as a far as the number of individual journals is concerned, diamond open access is the main form of open access publishing:” That said, Diamond OA only accounts for 8–9% of all scholarly articles — despite the number of Diamond journals, they tend to have lower throughput than bigger journals.

As for the other models, it’s been argued that “Publishers convinced funders that the only realistic way to transition to open access was to embrace pay-to-publish OA, demoting green OA to an [‘]also ran[’].” That said, while there has been a significant groundswell of interest in Gold OA, Green OA is having a resurgence as well, both through the uptake of Rights Retention policies, and also because some funders (such as the Gates Foundation) have refused to fund Gold OA. More on all of these points, below.

Transformative publishing agreements

As mentioned, in the “Gold OA”, there is a fee to publish articles. Transformative agreements are arrangements between publishers and institutions — or funders — who pay for a certain number of OA publications upfront. (Some TAs are offered in an “uncapped” format.)

Plan S is (or was) a strategy whereby funder requirements on OA publications are to be implemented, in connection with TAs. https://www.coalition-s.org/plan_s_principles/ For enthusiasts of Open Access, this may sound like a great idea, but some are more cautious. In any case, 2024 was supposed to be the deadline by which Plan S would be delivered.

“From [...] 31 December 2024, cOAlition S will no longer financially support transformative agreements or transformative journals. Instead, funders will direct their efforts to innovative and community-led Open Access publishing initiatives such as the Diamond model of OA.”

Some publishers, such as Cambridge University Press, have indicated that when authors don’t have a Transitional Agreement in place, and cannot afford a APC, they will route the papers to Gold Open Access without charge.

What about Green OA and “Rights Retention”?

Rights Retention is an agreement between the academic and their institution which relies on a contractual agreement to make academic works available under a CC-By licence. In this scenario, authors still own the copyright to their work as the default. The licensing arrangement is set up in such a way that it takes place prior to any subsequent copyright transfer.

Practically speaking, RRS is implemented by including a statement such as the following within the acknowledgements at the time of submission.

“This research was funded in whole or in part by [Funder] [Grant number]. For the purpose of Open Access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version arising from this submission.”

Some publishers are known to question these policies, and there is ongoing dialogue around their use. Some publishers may route articles known to be under RRS to their for-fee journals.

If Diamond OA is so widespread, why isn’t it the norm on a per-article basis?

For a long time, it’s been relatively simple to publish material ‘openly’ on your own web page. Peer review and the prestige of publishing in competitive journals adds considerable value for academics — robust peer review is a crucial differentiator between academic publications and “vanity” or “self-published” texts. As indicated in the talk on “Open Peer Review”, there is an increasing variety of peer review models out there. However, publishers — and this is especially true in the case of long form books — often provide other services as well, and these, typically, are not free. Martin Paul Eve, who runs the Open Library of Humanities, tabulated the fixed and per-article costs of running a small publishing business. These included fixed costs of £182K/annum, and nominal per-article costs of around £100. In short, there are costs involved in the publishing business that can’t easily be defrayed, even with efficiency-boosting tools like open source software. Of course, these costs can be underwritten through noncommercial models, and this is what happens in Diamond OA. Nevertheless, as indicated earlier, most diamond open access journals are managed by academic institutions, communities or platforms, and don’t have the same efficiencies that larger publishing houses have.

Problems for research diversity

Marcel Homba has argued that because not all authors can afford Article Processing Charges, a cultural preference for Gold OA can distort the kind of work that is carried out — “amplify[ing] certain publication biases that favour topics and viewpoints that are backed by rich organisations and industries”. This has implications for Research Diversity (see the video on that topic for relevant background on why this matters).

Other problems

Green OA is not without criticism either. The basic argument is that Green OA relies on continuation of library subscription fees, which creates a free-rider problem: why pay a fee if you can just get the articles for free. A counter-argument is that authors have the right to do what they like with their work, and publishers shouldn’t try to secure a monopoly on OA publication. Whichever side you take on the matter, this discussion highlights that the “business aspects” of research (and open research in particular) can matter more than we might naively think they do.

So what should I do as a researcher?

Are there any other practical things to do?

You could follow the lead of Deakin University and others who use the open source Open Journal Systems (OJS) software to set up and host a new Diamond journal — or find other ways to get involved with other innovations in OA, such as overlay journals.