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Achieving transparency on the publishing side will only be the first step towards a solution when dealing with already unsustainable cost increases.
Is it a good deal? Establishing value in transitional agreements and open access publishing
Transformative agreements (TAs) were designed to bring about a global transition from paywalled content to open access. Significant time and resource has been invested by university libraries in understanding their value. Here Paul Cavanagh, Senior Librarian Resource Acquisitions, and Lucy Veasey, Senior Research Librarian, from University of Nottingham Libraries explain why it’s so difficult.
HE key long-term priorities for universities and research funders in relation to open access
publishing are to achieve savings, improve compliance and increase publishing opportunities. Measuring whether these priorities are being met is difficult because the sector is still in the middle of chang- ing from the traditional subscription (pay to read) model to an open access publishing model in which authors pay to publish.
If this supposedly transformative phase passed quickly the complexity and uncertainty around their pricing would be short lived. But they don’t appear to be going anywhere, and insti- tutions have to use increasingly scarce resources to understand them. The change from pay to read to pay to publish is primarily being achieved through Transformative agreements (TAs) or ‘read and publish’ agreements between universities and publishers. As a research-intensive global uni- versity, University of Nottingham has invested time, resources and funding in reviewing, implementing and managing Transformative Agreements (TAs). We currently have 33 live TAs, combining both subscription payments (the ‘read’ part of the agreement) and article pro- cessing charges (APCs, the ‘publish’ part). The new element in these deals is paying to publish and this is where
data and understanding of value is most scarce. Some work has already been done by universities across the sector in part- nership with Jisc to understand Value For Money (VFM) on the publishing side. For libraries working with TAs, it’s essential to understand the value of both Read and Publish, and how each individual TA is structured for both elements, to maximise VFM for readers (students, academics and researchers) and authors.
Read
The read side of these deals is relatively transparent in comparison to the publish side, but it clearly shows that prices are unsustainable with significant annual increases above inflation of around three to six per cent.
The Read element has established indicators for costs and use (i.e. statis- tical usage reports from publishers or standardised information harvested via usage data platforms) so it can be quan- tified and compared against historical subscriptions, cost and usage data. However, assessing the value is com- plicated by other benefits an agreement may offer like additional access to content for all users (i.e. Transnational education access for University of Notting- ham China and Malaysia students, staff and researchers), offer value within the wider collection (e.g. supports a strategic research or teaching area), and comply with sectoral standards (i.e. Accessibility standards and features).
There may be opportunities to make
Lucy Veasey and Paul Cavenagh.
small costs savings in “big deals” through bundling but Read & Publish deals should be flipping hybrid journals to fully open access.
Bundling makes it difficult to under- stand the cost of change as this would mean unpicking the value of discounts and weighing them up against costs and benefits of having a more flexible collec- tion. And this can’t just be a snapshot, all the indicators involved need to be visible over significant periods of time to see if the prices of any of the options are likely to change unsustainably.
Further complications to staying on top of a TA’s VFM for both the read and publish is new iterations of deals, where titles are dropped in and out of agree- ments by publishers.
Some titles are dropped from agreements without converting to fully open access, and it’s not always necessarily clear why (i.e. has the title moved to a different publisher?). Libraries must ensure that they check the licence for each agreement thoroughly throughout its duration (i.e.
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