Alex Stewart, Deputy Managing Editor, The Physiological Society

https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.118.12

Plan S, the open access movement driven by some of Europe’s major research funders, has recently encountered some notable hurdles in its path. In March, its figurehead, Robert-Jan Smits, left his role as the European Commission’s Special Envoy on Open Access. Shortly thereafter, the deadline for publishers’ total compliance to the Plan was delayed by a year to January 2024. This delay was caused by considerable consternation at some of the initiative’s more controversial requirements and was announced alongside certain concessions.¹ Compromises included the acceptance of hybrid journals (subscription journals that offer immediate open access of individual articles at a cost to the authors) as compliant until 2024, provided such journals can demonstrate their commitment to becoming fully open access by this deadline through the means of so-called transformative agreements.

Transformative agreements are contracts between institutional library consortia and publishers that facilitate the transition of scholarly journals’ business models to open access. These agreements work by converting current institutional subscription spend into open access publishing spend. Estimates suggest that, annually, €7.6 billion is spent globally on journal subscriptions and 2 million articles are published.² Libraries foot the majority of this bill, contributing significantly to the generous profit margins enjoyed by many publishers.³ Proponents of Plan S, and open access in general, suggest that this total spend could be cut to €4 billion in an entirely open access world, assuming article processing charges (APCs) are capped at €2,000. This cap is somewhat lower than current APCs imposed by many of science’s most highly regarded journals. The economics of open access publishing depend heavily on the rejection rate of the individual journal.

While there currently exists no fixed model of transformative agreement, many are being experimented with. The key breakthrough was the agreement struck between Wiley and Projekt DEAL (a consortium of German research institutions and funding agencies). The discussions around this 3-year contract centred on a Publish-and-Read model. The “publish” part of this deal grants immediate, free open access to all publications authored at institutions belonging to the consortium. Instead of costs for this deal being calculated on a subscription fee for reading, the consortium pressed for a “fair costing” based on the volume of papers published in Wiley journals by its researchers. The two parties agreed on a fee of €2,750 per article for up to 10,000 articles yearly – a total derived from the historical spend by the participating libraries on access to Wiley journals. The “read” part of the agreement provides the consortium’s libraries with free access to the whole of Wiley’s subscription research collection. In summary, DEAL institutions pay the APCs for up to 10,000 articles per year from their affiliated researchers to be published as open access in Wiley journals and get subscription to Wiley journals for their institutions included.

Under the terms of this agreement, individual authors no longer need to worry about finding funds to pay APCs for immediate open access publishing. They also retain copyright to their work. The transformation is essentially cost neutral both for the consortium members and for Wiley. The agreement is also considered compliant with Plan S, with the hybrid journals in the collection considered to be on a transformative path to full open access.

On the other hand, this model does not fully allay the fears of selective journals. Journals providing rigorous peer review with high rejection rates could argue that the Publish-and-Read model exerts pressure to publish a greater volume of research, potentially to the detriment of scientific quality. The agreement has also raised questions about global inequality. The DEAL consortium showed the bargaining power of a large alliance in a prosperous country to strike an economically favourable deal. However, researchers and librarians in the less wealthy Global South have understandable concerns that they could find themselves “locked out” of authorship – unable to negotiate acceptable terms for national licences and with their publishing opportunities then limited by high APCs.⁴

Other models have been trialled. SAGE and UNC-Chapel Hill recently signed a 1-year pilot deal, on the surface very similar to most Publish-and-Read agreements.⁵ For the same price as a standard subscription, UNC-Chapel Hill authors will also receive publishing credits at a value of 50% of the deal’s worth to fund open access publishing. Of course, these credits will not stretch to fund APCs for all articles published by the institution’s authors, and difficulties may arise when it comes to deciding which authors are allocated credits. Additionally, for each paid APC, SAGE will give UNC-Chapel Hill credit worth half the value paid. This aspect of the model is inventive, though it does require a lot of communication between researchers and their funders and institutional libraries.

Authors who publish externally funded research will be obliged to pay an APC if their funding includes a publication budget, or if their funder offers a central budget to cover publication charges. Even when neither of these options apply, these authors are expected to directly request their funder to cover the cost. For each such paid APC, SAGE will give UNC-Chapel Hill credit worth half the value paid. While publishing should be viewed as an important stage of the research process, it remains to be seen whether funders who do not currently provide funds for APCs will be willing to shoulder further costs.

Overall, Projekt DEAL remains the most notable transformative deal struck. It will be interesting to assess the contract’s impact on the publishing landscape once it expires in January 2022. Given the recent signing of an equivalent deal between Wiley and Jisc in the UK, it seems likely that the academic institutions responsible for the vast majority of research output will be tied into a global patchwork of similar transformative agreements. Going forward, it is probable that the consortia representing these institutions will push for reduced Publish-And-Read fees, especially as the “read” fee will become less valuable in an increasingly open access environment. Assuming publishers do not implement geowalling, researchers of institutions or nations not covered by these agreements may benefit from free research content, but at the same time could struggle to pay to publish their research in a world of uncapped APCs.6 Somewhat ironically, smaller publishers may also suffer in this landscape, lacking the resources of their larger commercial rivals to negotiate such global licencing deals. Smits’s parting description of Plan S as an icebreaker has rung true, but it remains to be seen whether, and if so how, full open access compliance will be pushed over the finishing line by January 2024.

References

1. Else H (2019). Ambitious open-access Plan S delayed to let research community adapt. [Online] com. Available at: www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019- 01717-2 [Accessed 6 Mar. 2020]. DOI: 10.1038/d41586-019-01717-2
2. Else H (2018). Radical open-access plan could spell end to journal subscriptions. [Online] com. Available at: www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018- 06178-7 [Accessed 6 Mar. 2020]. DOI: 10.1038/d41586-018-06178-7
3. Buranyi S (2017). Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science? [Online] The Guardian. Available at: www.theguardian.com/ science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science [Accessed 6 Mar. 2020].
4. Shaw D, Elger B (2018). Unethical Aspects of Open Access. Accountability in Research, 25(7 – 8), 409 – 416.
5. Hinchliffe L (2019). Leveraging a Transformative Agreement to Incentivize Funder Spend. [Online] The Scholarly Kitchen. Available at: scholarlykitchen. sspnet.org/2019/10/29/leveraging-a-transformative-agreement-to-incentivize-funder-spend/ [Accessed 6 Mar. 2020].
6. Hinchliffe L (2019). Can Geowalling Save Open Access? [Online] The Scholarly Kitchen. Available at: scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2019/11/14/can-geowalling-save-open-access/ [Accessed 6 Mar. 2020].