The latest strategy for addressing the rapidly rising journal subscription prices that have fueled the crisis in scholarly publishing across the disciplines is the establishment of transformative open access agreements.

Transformative agreements are contracts negotiated between institutions (libraries, national and regional consortia) and publishers that transform the business model underlying scholarly journal publishing, from one based on subscriptions to one based on article processing charges (APCs) that are paid by funders, authors, or authors’ institutions.

The University of California has developed a multi-payer model that combines library contributions with grant funding, when possible. UC has successfully negotiated transformative open access agreements with five publishers. See more details about transformative open access agreements here.

Article processing charge (APC) support, combined with the adoption of open access policies, and the signing of transformative open access agreements with publishers (of native OA and hybrid journals), are intended to help further the UC goal of immediate and open access to publications by UC authors. Article processing charge support includes the below initiatives.

Learn more.