In celebration of Open Access Week 2024 (October 21 - 27), the UCSB Library spoke to Mark Clemente, the Open Access Publisher Agreements Manager at California Digital Library (CDL), about the University of California's Transformative Agreements with scholarly journal publishers.
The UCSB Library is committed to participating in UC initiatives to support a sustainable open-access publishing model for UCSB authors.
Please share a bit about yourself and your role as the Open Access Publisher Agreements Manager at the California Digital Library.
In my role at UC, I am responsible for initiating, developing, and coordinating the implementation of open access publisher agreements across a broad spectrum of publishing partners in support of UC’s transformative open access initiatives, ensuring that these agreements are effectively designed, managed, and integrated into library and publisher workflows. These agreements are administered at the system level by the California Digital Library, a unit of the UC Office of the President. CDL’s mission is to provide transformative digital library services, grounded in campus partnerships and extended through external collaborations, that amplify the impact of the libraries, scholarship, and resources of UC.
I work directly with authors, campus libraries, and publishers to support UC’s and CDL’s missions to share UC scholarship with the world. My professional background is in academic research libraries, where I have primarily focused on scholarly communication and open access advocacy over the course of nearly two decades.
What are UC transformative agreements, and how do they work?
“Transformative agreements” refer to contracts between institutions (such as libraries or universities) and publishers that aim to transform the business model underlying scholarly publishing, shifting from a subscription model to one that prioritizes open access to research.
As part of its mission as a public university, UC is committed to making it easier and more affordable for UC authors to publish open access. UC pursues multiple pathways to advance a sustainable, large-scale shift to open access. One pathway is through transformative agreements. These agreements leverage the University’s resources by redirecting library subscription funds to help UC authors pay for open access publishing. This approach helps control the University’s overall journal-related costs, which had been climbing in two ways — (1) unsustainable increases in library subscription costs; and (2) at the same time, increases in the number of authors using their funds to pay for open access publishing.
Under most of UC’s open access publishing agreements, existing library subscription funds have been repurposed to provide financial support instead to help UC authors pay open access fees. However, Library subscription funds are insufficient to cover the full cost of open access publishing for every UC author. The funding models for these agreements depend upon authors with research funds to pay a portion of the open access fees. This allows the UC libraries to offer financial support to all UC authors while ensuring that authors without grant funds can be fully covered if they choose to publish open access.
UC has signed open access publishing agreements with more than 17 publishers, from larger commercial publishers such as Elsevier and Springer Nature, fully open access publishers like PLOS and Frontiers, to society publishers such as the American Chemical Society.
About half of UC-authored articles are now eligible for open access publishing under these agreements, and over 10,000 UC-authored articles have been made openly available since UC signed its first transformative agreement in 2019. UC’s faculty have played a central role in spearheading open access publishing across the system for many years, and these publisher agreements are a joint effort between the Academic Senate and the Libraries. In 2022, the UC Academic Senate published a statement strongly recommending that all UC authors choose the open access publishing route when available.
Who is eligible under UC’s open access agreements and discounts?
As long as you are: 1) the article’s corresponding author; 2) affiliated with UC while you conducted the research for the article; 3) publishing in a journal covered by one of UC’s open access agreements or discounts, you are eligible to receive financial support for the payment of open access fees. This applies regardless of your role, personnel status, or order among your co-authors. Not only faculty are eligible – students, postdocs, clinicians, adjunct, and emeritus faculty, for example, are also eligible.
If you are no longer at UC, but you conducted the research for the article during your time here, you are still eligible as long as: 1) the article is published within one year after departing UC; and 2) your UC affiliation also appears on the final published version of the article.
What does the corresponding author mean when applying for article processing charges covered under the transformative agreements?
Publishers generally consider the corresponding author to be the person listed as the contact during the submission, production, and publication process and who is identified as “Author for correspondence” on the final published article. The corresponding author is typically the person who oversees the manuscript and correspondence during the publication process — from manuscript corrections and proofreading to handling the revisions and re-submission of revised manuscripts up to the acceptance of the manuscripts. The corresponding author has the authority to act on behalf of all co-authors in all matters pertaining to the publication of the manuscript, including supplementary material. The corresponding author also acts as the point of contact for any inquiries after the paper is published.
Do transformative agreements cover 100% of the article processing charges?
Some of UC’s agreements cover up to the full amount of the open access fees, others offer just a discount. UC’s Office of Scholarly Communication maintains a list of all active agreements and discounts and the level of support available under each one.
Terms vary across the agreements, but generally, under most agreements:
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UC corresponding authors receive an automatic $1000 contribution towards the article processing charge (APC), paid by the UC libraries.
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Authors with grant funds available for publication fees are asked to pay the remaining APC.
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Authors without such grant funds can request full coverage of the APC from the UC libraries.
Because the amount of funding varies, we strongly recommend checking the list of agreements linked above to determine whether a given publisher has a current agreement with UC (as not all publishers do) and the amount of financial support available before submitting your article.
How does the payment processing work?
To receive funding under one of UC’s open access agreements, you should indicate your UC affiliation in the publisher’s submission portal, typically by using your UC email address and/or selecting UC as your institution at submission. This will trigger the publisher’s portal to display instructions on how to publish under the UC agreement. Generally, this happens at the point in the publishing workflow when you are asked whether you want to publish open access.
For UC’s agreements that follow the model mentioned earlier, in which authors with grant funds are asked to contribute towards a partial amount of the fees, the publisher’s portal will present you with the option to either contribute funds or request full coverage:
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If you are contributing grant funds towards the open access fee, you will be sent an invoice for your share of the fee.
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If you are requesting full coverage of the open access fee, you will not be invoiced for any amount. The UC libraries will pay the full amount directly to the publisher.
Because the process varies among publishers, UC’s Office of Scholarly Communication maintains FAQs for each active publisher agreement, linked from the list of all active agreements and discounts.
What are the benefits of taking advantage of UC transformative agreements?
For many authors, publishing open access can be prohibitively expensive, even for authors with grant funds available for publication fees. This is especially the case for authors in the humanities and social sciences who often have less access to research funds. UC’s transformative agreements make it easier and more affordable for UC authors to publish open access.
Open access publishing has many benefits, including:
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Higher citation rates and greater visibility of research
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Accelerating the pace of discovery (e.g., as seen during the COVID-19 pandemic)
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More significant influence with policymakers or industry practitioners outside of academia
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More equitable access for researchers in low-income countries
- Compliance with research funders, as funders increasingly require open access as a condition for grants
Do you have any other words of wisdom for UC authors on the UC transformative agreements?
The success of UC’s open access agreements, and more broadly, UC’s mission as a public university, depends on authors’ participation and willingness to share their scholarship freely with the world. We encourage you to take advantage of these agreements and to let us know if you have questions or feedback. The purpose of UC’s open access agreements is to make it easier and more affordable for UC authors to publish open access, and this requires us to be responsive to the needs of our researchers when building models that aim to do so.
Your campus libraries are an outstanding resource if you have more questions about open access or UC’s transformative agreements. You can also contact me directly at OpenAccessInquiries@ucop.edu. My role is to directly support authors and campuses as they navigate these agreements, and I am always happy to help. Last, the Office of Scholarly Communication also maintains a General FAQ for UC’s open access agreements.
