Stephan Kuster


g challenges from each side: ‘Consortia are pretty tightly run ships and there’s a huge long tail of publishers for them to work with, while smaller publishers haven’t got experience of selling directly to library consortia. Our report recommends that some standards work could be done between consortia and publishers... and tools could be designed to help them.’ The report also recommends that


funders could take steps to enable OA funding to be aggregated through universities and libraries, rather than disseminating OA funds to individual researchers via grants. ‘This would bring greater transparency


and accountability of how funds are spent, and would also enable more universities and libraries to enter into OA agreements with publishers of all sizes,’ points out Wise. ‘All publishers are vital in


Liam Earney


the transition to open access... if we want a worldwide transition to OA, we need to carry all authors, all publishers, all libraries and funders with us into the future – everyone has an important role.’


Room for many models Oxford University Press started to fully embrace open access research back in 2005, when it converted its hybrid journal, Nucleic Acids Research, to a fully open access publication. Since this time, the publisher, recognised as the largest university press in the world, has seen gold OA grow dramatically, both through hybrid journals and fully open access journals.


OUP has recently signed 20 read-and- publish deals, including a contract with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. But as Lucy Oates, senior publisher in OUP’s OA Strategy team highlights: ‘I certainly don’t see a one size fits all approach to open access – we see a collaborative approach as the way forward. ‘We know that there are different


approaches to publishing open access, and I think this is an area where it’s important to be aware of the sensitivities of different market players,’ she said. ‘The more options there are for authors


to have access to funding and the more options there are for authors to comply quickly and easily with an OA policy, the more this will help support the whole complex research ecosystem.’ However, Oates does see read-and- publish deals as an important stepping stone to open access , and believes that the agreements open a door to researchers that may not have had access to OA in the past. ‘Read-and-publish deals are complex but hopefully for an author they are a


8 Research Information August/September 2021


Lucy Oates


“Pure OA publishers, as well as smaller publishers, are being sidelined when it comes to negotiating agreements”


simple proposition and enable [easier] compliance to open access publishing,’ she said. ‘I think the degree to which a read-and-publish deal can help individual institutions will vary... but transitional agreements, in general, can provide the ability for more institutions to switch to open access.’ In a similar vein, Jisc’s Earney, while


embroiled in negotiating read-and-publish deals with large for-profit publishers, asserts the need for a balanced approach to achieve open access. Highlighting how ‘it’s not just about these big read- and-publish’ deals, he wholeheartedly agrees that a diverse set of publishing arrangements with a variety of publishers is critical for the community’s diversity, and a sustainable transition towards OA. ‘One of the main reasons for transitional


agreements and bringing costs under control is to free up OA funds that can then be used to support a broader range of publishers,’ he said. ‘I do think relationships with the big publishers will continue to be important for many of Jisc’s members,’ he concluded, ‘but these will be more sustainable and equitable, and less like “here’s last year’s bill plus three per cent”.’RI


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