Routes to open access: transitional agreements
Our transitional agreements convert subscription expenditure to support immediate open access publishing of research output and continued access to read content that remains behind a paywall.
Our requirements for transitional agreements are informed by analysis of previous offsetting agreements and have been endorsed by our strategic groups, SCONUL, RLUK and UK universities. Publishers must meet these requirements for an agreement to be deemed transitional. Our transitional agreements oversight group has been set up to monitor the progress and impact of these agreements.
We have undertaken a review of transitional agreements to examine the rate, costs and progress in transitioning research outputs to immediate open access and determine where next for transitional agreements.
Find out about our review of transitional agreements.
In response to changing sector requirements, an international working group, co-chaired by Jisc, PLOS, and cOAlition S has developed the ‘How equitable is it?’ framework to assess publisher agreements against a set of equity criteria and help facilitate the move to more equitable and sustainable publishing models
Find out more about the 'How equitable is it?' tool
In the meantime the information below relates more to the established models of transitional agreement and will be updated as new models emerge.
There are several different models that meet the cOAlition S requirements for transformative agreements and we've prepared a guide to the various models. For agreements that incorporate ‘read’ and ‘publish’ elements, standard rate VAT will be applied to the publish fee only.
We register all agreements that meet our requirements in the ESAC registry and publish contracts here in line with OA2020 transparency requirements. Summary descriptions of all our agreements and current negotiations can be found in licence subscriptions manager. Read our guide on working with transitional agreements, which aims to help institutions understand, manage, communicate and evaluate these agreements.
Publishing via read and publish agreements is normally managed by a specialist team within an institution’s library and the following restrictions commonly apply:
- Article type - often limited to original research or review articles although the restrictions can vary by publisher
- Publishing venue - publishing may be permitted within all of the publisher’s journal titles or a specific subset
- Author affiliation – normally restricted to corresponding authors with a contract of employment at the relevant (subscribing) institution and not honorary, visiting or NHS members of staff without a contract of employment. Institutions might wish however to use their own discretion re. UK-funded researchers
The knowledge and discoveries resulting from the investment and collective effort of UK academic institutions, researchers, publishers and research funders must be available for maximum benefit and use.
UK academic institutions and sector agencies, working alongside Jisc, have established the following requirements, which set out the measures required to transition to full and immediate open access and enable the move to fair, affordable and financially sustainable models for publishing services. The requirements are reviewed annually, and were last updated in October 2023.
These objectives are in line with the LIBER principles for publisher negotiations, the principles of Plan S, and the objectives of the OA2020 global initiative to accelerate the transition to open access.
Transitional agreements must:
1. Reduce and constrain costs
Academic publishing is a shared endeavour between research funders, academic staff, institutions, and publishers. The UK is one of the largest net contributors to academic publishing through peer review, editorial services, and funding, and this must be reflected in the costs publishers charge for each of those services. Prices must be fair, reasonable and not exceed the cost to the publisher of the services provided to authors, institutions, and readers.
Agreements and their costs must imperatively reflect the financial context institutions now operate under and reduce and constrain all costs, including the costs of publishing in fully OA titles. To qualify as transitional, agreements must utilise funds previously spent on subscriptions to fund uncapped OA publishing across all titles guaranteed to authors, and to create systems and workflows to sustain a durable OA infrastructure. The total fee charged for both access to paywalled content and OA publishing must result in a reduction on existing spend, ie existing subscription expenditure. APC payments made "in the wild" by individual researchers in hybrid titles cannot be supported by institutions. Any price increase must be justified by demonstrable significant improvements to the Publish element of the agreement and any fees relating to read or closed access must decrease.
The publisher must not charge the author or their institution any further publishing fees either under or outside the agreement including page charges, colour charges, or charges for supplementary materials.
Academic publishing is a shared endeavour between research funders, academic staff, institutions, and publishers. The UK is one of the largest net contributors to academic publishing through peer review, editorial services, and funding, and this must be reflected in the costs publishers charge for each of those services. Prices must be fair, reasonable and not exceed the cost to the publisher of the services provided to authors, institutions, and readers.
Agreements and their costs must imperatively reflect the financial context institutions now operate under and reduce and constrain all costs, including the costs of publishing in fully OA titles. To qualify as transitional, agreements must utilise funds previously spent on subscriptions to fund uncapped OA publishing across all titles guaranteed to authors, and to create systems and workflows to sustain a durable OA infrastructure. The total fee charged for both access to paywalled content and OA publishing must result in a reduction on existing spend, ie existing subscription expenditure. APC payments made "in the wild" by individual researchers in hybrid titles cannot be supported by institutions. Any price increase must be justified by demonstrable significant improvements to the Publish element of the agreement and any fees relating to read or closed access must decrease.
The publisher must not charge the author or their institution any further publishing fees either under or outside the agreement including page charges, colour charges, or charges for supplementary materials.
2. Offer a choice of open access publishing options to authors and institutions
UK institutions' support for agreements is contingent on publishers providing author choice and a range of publishing models.
This includes publishing the Version of Record OA in a journal or on a publishing platform under the transitional agreement and the immediate deposit of the author's accepted manuscript (or the Version of Record) in an institutional or subject repository via a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence as mandated by their funder or institutional policies (Green OA).
Any prior licence applied to the author's accepted manuscript by an author, whether or not it is a requirement of their funder or affiliated institution, takes precedence over the licensing terms authors agree to with the publisher. Institutions, research funders and authors are increasingly using Rights Retention policies and statements as a route to achieving OA.
As an essential requirement to Transitional Agreements, publishers' author facing communication must respect the authors retaining their choice of OA publishing options. Authors must not be presented with language or terms that have the effect of undermining the grant of prior rights and the subsequent open publication via their workflows, author facing information or licences to publish. To uphold the use of rights retention, publishers must amend their workflows and author facing messaging to respect the assertion of prior rights, and/or to signpost alternative OA publishing options to authors. The goal is to prevent publishers attempting to procure a breach of licence or unilaterally amending its licences or workflows.
Proposals that do not fulfil this requirement will not be presented to the sector and may be escalated to the Content Expert Group (CEG).
UK institutions' support for agreements is contingent on publishers providing author choice and a range of publishing models.
This includes publishing the Version of Record OA in a journal or on a publishing platform under the transitional agreement and the immediate deposit of the author's accepted manuscript (or the Version of Record) in an institutional or subject repository via a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence as mandated by their funder or institutional policies (Green OA).
Any prior licence applied to the author's accepted manuscript by an author, whether or not it is a requirement of their funder or affiliated institution, takes precedence over the licensing terms authors agree to with the publisher. Institutions, research funders and authors are increasingly using Rights Retention policies and statements as a route to achieving OA.
As an essential requirement to Transitional Agreements, publishers' author facing communication must respect the authors retaining their choice of OA publishing options. Authors must not be presented with language or terms that have the effect of undermining the grant of prior rights and the subsequent open publication via their workflows, author facing information or licences to publish. To uphold the use of rights retention, publishers must amend their workflows and author facing messaging to respect the assertion of prior rights, and/or to signpost alternative OA publishing options to authors. The goal is to prevent publishers attempting to procure a breach of licence or unilaterally amending its licences or workflows.
Proposals that do not fulfil this requirement will not be presented to the sector and may be escalated to the Content Expert Group (CEG).
3. Demonstrate a commitment to a rapid and equitable global transition to open access
Progress in removing subscription paywalls must not risk creating barriers to participation in open research.
The OA transition must be truly inclusive and reflect the plurality of research disciplines, topics, languages, and outputs. The UK has made good progress in transitioning its research to OA and supporting a diverse range of publisher OA agreements, but publishers must do more and evidence their commitment to a rapid and equitable global OA transition.
Publishers must demonstrate how they are pursuing OA agreements at pace which includes the following measures; offering OA models as the default to all global customers, applying differentiated regional pricing (geopricing) to customers so they can participate, and a commitment to move from a "per unit" payment model (ie APCs) to more equitable payment models. A "one size fits all" approach, eg an APC-based "gold" only approach with no regional alteration restricts publishing opportunities to better resourced countries. This includes offering a range of agreement models and the application of differential pricing, based on transparent metrics, such as Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), with provision made for those who cannot afford to pay anything at all.
To continue to benefit from public and institutional funds, publishers must transform their portfolios by "flipping" subscription titles to OA. Hybrid journals are not a long-term sustainable solution to OA. To demonstrate their commitment to a rapid transition to OA, publishers must not launch new hybrid titles. The proportion of OA content must overtake and eventually replace closed access content, without closed access articles increasing in absolute numbers. The ever-growing number of articles behind paywall, including in hybrid titles, undermines the transition to OA. Hybrid titles must be flipped to fully OA within a clear and reasonably short timeline.
Titles offered in an agreement must remain within an agreement for the lifetime of the agreement, even if they "flip" to full OA (OA publishing rights continue at no extra cost in flipped titles). Changes to titles, eg transfer, flip to full OA, must be clearly communicated to Jisc and to participating institutions ahead of time.
Journals must be archived and preserved for future scholarship in at least one of the following archiving solutions: Portico, CLOCKSS or LOCKSS; with accurate and discoverable records relating to where the archived material may be found.
Progress in removing subscription paywalls must not risk creating barriers to participation in open research.
The OA transition must be truly inclusive and reflect the plurality of research disciplines, topics, languages, and outputs. The UK has made good progress in transitioning its research to OA and supporting a diverse range of publisher OA agreements, but publishers must do more and evidence their commitment to a rapid and equitable global OA transition.
Publishers must demonstrate how they are pursuing OA agreements at pace which includes the following measures; offering OA models as the default to all global customers, applying differentiated regional pricing (geopricing) to customers so they can participate, and a commitment to move from a "per unit" payment model (ie APCs) to more equitable payment models. A "one size fits all" approach, eg an APC-based "gold" only approach with no regional alteration restricts publishing opportunities to better resourced countries. This includes offering a range of agreement models and the application of differential pricing, based on transparent metrics, such as Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), with provision made for those who cannot afford to pay anything at all.
To continue to benefit from public and institutional funds, publishers must transform their portfolios by "flipping" subscription titles to OA. Hybrid journals are not a long-term sustainable solution to OA. To demonstrate their commitment to a rapid transition to OA, publishers must not launch new hybrid titles. The proportion of OA content must overtake and eventually replace closed access content, without closed access articles increasing in absolute numbers. The ever-growing number of articles behind paywall, including in hybrid titles, undermines the transition to OA. Hybrid titles must be flipped to fully OA within a clear and reasonably short timeline.
Titles offered in an agreement must remain within an agreement for the lifetime of the agreement, even if they "flip" to full OA (OA publishing rights continue at no extra cost in flipped titles). Changes to titles, eg transfer, flip to full OA, must be clearly communicated to Jisc and to participating institutions ahead of time.
Journals must be archived and preserved for future scholarship in at least one of the following archiving solutions: Portico, CLOCKSS or LOCKSS; with accurate and discoverable records relating to where the archived material may be found.
4. Provide transparency - evidence how charges are fair, reasonable and relate to publishing services and the transition to open access
It is in the public interest not only that publicly funded research has the widest possible reach but also that information on the costs and conditions of publishing are openly available.
Fees must not exceed the actual costs of providing each of the publishing services, such as the provision of dashboards, infrastructure (including archiving), staff, support, and service development. It is not appropriate for hybrid journals that continue to receive subscription income to recover and exceed the full economic cost of their editorial publishing services via OA charges.
Publishers must demonstrate that they reconcile and systematically offset their global and local OA and subscription revenues. Therefore, charges for paywalled content and collections must reflect the growing volume of content made open access – reconciliation of the volume of content made open access should be undertaken each year and reflected in the price paid by all customers for read access. Reading costs must diminish over time even in instances where the proportion of content behind paywall stagnates. The remaining charges should relate to OA publishing charges only, and as such they must not be based on articles published with closed access (not OA) under existing transitional agreements. This reconciliation process should be built into business processes and systems. Publishers must be transparent on this reconciliation process and how it will result in an affordable and sustainable transition to full OA. The goal is the implementation of fair, transparent, affordable, and sustainable pricing for publishing services and the responsible use of public funds.
We require publishers to enter into open and transparent conversations with the sector and Jisc on the transition of their portfolio, business models and underlying financial accounting, including with the Transitional Agreements Oversight Group (TAOG). Publishers must commit to adhere to at least one of the price transparency frameworks within the cOAlition S Journal Comparison Service and provide a summary overview with agreement proposals. The goal is for Jisc and the sector to assess precisely the efficacy of the transitional agreements they enter into in achieving the sector’s OA objectives and act on the findings, eg by placing any agreements that are not meeting the required standards under special review by the sector's expert groups (Content Expert Group and TAOG) and cancelling renewals that do not meet expectations. Jisc assesses agreements with bibliodiversity in mind, taking into account the challenges a diverse range of publishers may be facing.
On agreement completion, details of the costs, pricing models and the agreement terms (contract) will be made publicly available on the Jisc website. The agreement will also be logged in the ESAC registry.
It is in the public interest not only that publicly funded research has the widest possible reach but also that information on the costs and conditions of publishing are openly available.
Fees must not exceed the actual costs of providing each of the publishing services, such as the provision of dashboards, infrastructure (including archiving), staff, support, and service development. It is not appropriate for hybrid journals that continue to receive subscription income to recover and exceed the full economic cost of their editorial publishing services via OA charges.
Publishers must demonstrate that they reconcile and systematically offset their global and local OA and subscription revenues. Therefore, charges for paywalled content and collections must reflect the growing volume of content made open access – reconciliation of the volume of content made open access should be undertaken each year and reflected in the price paid by all customers for read access. Reading costs must diminish over time even in instances where the proportion of content behind paywall stagnates. The remaining charges should relate to OA publishing charges only, and as such they must not be based on articles published with closed access (not OA) under existing transitional agreements. This reconciliation process should be built into business processes and systems. Publishers must be transparent on this reconciliation process and how it will result in an affordable and sustainable transition to full OA. The goal is the implementation of fair, transparent, affordable, and sustainable pricing for publishing services and the responsible use of public funds.
We require publishers to enter into open and transparent conversations with the sector and Jisc on the transition of their portfolio, business models and underlying financial accounting, including with the Transitional Agreements Oversight Group (TAOG). Publishers must commit to adhere to at least one of the price transparency frameworks within the cOAlition S Journal Comparison Service and provide a summary overview with agreement proposals. The goal is for Jisc and the sector to assess precisely the efficacy of the transitional agreements they enter into in achieving the sector’s OA objectives and act on the findings, eg by placing any agreements that are not meeting the required standards under special review by the sector's expert groups (Content Expert Group and TAOG) and cancelling renewals that do not meet expectations. Jisc assesses agreements with bibliodiversity in mind, taking into account the challenges a diverse range of publishers may be facing.
On agreement completion, details of the costs, pricing models and the agreement terms (contract) will be made publicly available on the Jisc website. The agreement will also be logged in the ESAC registry.
5. Promote simplicity, efficiency, and reduced bureaucracy
These requirements form part of the Jisc model licence and are derived from our discussions with publishers, intermediaries, and international bodies, including the ESAC recommendations. Publishers will be asked to provide compensation should core service levels not be met.
Agreements must maximise the value returned with the minimum burden on public finances, researchers, and institutions. Publishers must work with Jisc and the sector to streamline the processes and workflows associated with managing OA to deliver greater efficiencies and discovery of OA material.
Author identification
The publisher shall be responsible for the identification of eligible authors and eligible articles from a given individual/institution as part of the submission and publication process.
The publisher shall build ORCID, RoR, Ringgold, or other recognised identifiers, into submission, production, and peer review workflows; expose author ORCIDs in published articles and accepted manuscripts via AI services; use Crossref and other discovery services.
The publisher shall identify eligible authors through a combination of the following parameters:
- Authors stating their affiliation(s) at article submission, including the use of
- RoR IDs
- ORCID
- IP ranges
- Email domain(s)
Article metadata
The publisher undertakes to:
- Where publishing services are based on eligibility of corresponding authors, the corresponding author designation must be provided in article metadata for discovery and indexing
- Register article DOIs with Crossref upon acceptance and inform all co-authors.
- Identify funders (and, when possible, proportion of funding by funder if multiple) of institutional research by populating metadata, including funding body and grant number, and the authors and institutions associated with them; register funding data on bodies such as Crossref Funder Registry, Publication Router, PubMed/EPMC and on the publisher site so institutions can report and show compliance
- Include clear licensing terms at article level to ensure readers/users understand what they may do with a given document. Thus, allowing repositories and related services to act upon the correct article licensing terms. Article-level information is required for each version of the article and ideally by populating Crossref license information (LicenseRef) as well as in a human-readable form
Funder compliance
The publisher undertakes to:
- Implement author workflow processes that prioritise and assign CC-BY as the first and default option licence regardless of funder and make messaging clear to authors for whom the application of such licensing terms is required by their funder. Where an author needs to change their licence to a less restrictive licence, make this process as simple as possible
- Join our Publications Router service to provide the systematic transfer of metadata and deposit of full-text articles into repositories
- Deposit articles into PubMed Central (PMC) and Europe PMC, by the time of first online publication (Version of Record), in accordance with funder policies
The publisher undertakes to provide management information including:
- Full expenditure data within and outside of the agreement ie subscriptions; OA APCs; extraneous publishing fees (eg, colour/over-length); read-and-publish fees
- The cumulative share of OA articles published in each journal
- Details of OA articles published in fully OA and subscriptions journals inclusive/exclusive of the agreement
- UK articles as a proportion of global output
- UK corresponding author article level data for all articles, including information on funder and licence type
- Details of which titles have "flipped to OA" that were previously paid for through subscriptions.
In addition, to support discussions with the transitional agreements oversight group, we seek the following:
- The number of titles expected to flip in the current calendar year
- Predicted expansion within each journal portfolio
- Predicted publication changes to journal portfolios
- Predicted proportion of OA articles of the total output for each hybrid title and overall, for each portfolio
These requirements form part of the Jisc model licence and are derived from our discussions with publishers, intermediaries, and international bodies, including the ESAC recommendations. Publishers will be asked to provide compensation should core service levels not be met.
Agreements must maximise the value returned with the minimum burden on public finances, researchers, and institutions. Publishers must work with Jisc and the sector to streamline the processes and workflows associated with managing OA to deliver greater efficiencies and discovery of OA material.
Author identification
The publisher shall be responsible for the identification of eligible authors and eligible articles from a given individual/institution as part of the submission and publication process.
The publisher shall build ORCID, RoR, Ringgold, or other recognised identifiers, into submission, production, and peer review workflows; expose author ORCIDs in published articles and accepted manuscripts via AI services; use Crossref and other discovery services.
The publisher shall identify eligible authors through a combination of the following parameters:
- Authors stating their affiliation(s) at article submission, including the use of
- RoR IDs
- ORCID
- IP ranges
- Email domain(s)
Article metadata
The publisher undertakes to:
- Where publishing services are based on eligibility of corresponding authors, the corresponding author designation must be provided in article metadata for discovery and indexing
- Register article DOIs with Crossref upon acceptance and inform all co-authors.
- Identify funders (and, when possible, proportion of funding by funder if multiple) of institutional research by populating metadata, including funding body and grant number, and the authors and institutions associated with them; register funding data on bodies such as Crossref Funder Registry, Publication Router, PubMed/EPMC and on the publisher site so institutions can report and show compliance
- Include clear licensing terms at article level to ensure readers/users understand what they may do with a given document. Thus, allowing repositories and related services to act upon the correct article licensing terms. Article-level information is required for each version of the article and ideally by populating Crossref license information (LicenseRef) as well as in a human-readable form
Funder compliance
The publisher undertakes to:
- Implement author workflow processes that prioritise and assign CC-BY as the first and default option licence regardless of funder and make messaging clear to authors for whom the application of such licensing terms is required by their funder. Where an author needs to change their licence to a less restrictive licence, make this process as simple as possible
- Join our Publications Router service to provide the systematic transfer of metadata and deposit of full-text articles into repositories
- Deposit articles into PubMed Central (PMC) and Europe PMC, by the time of first online publication (Version of Record), in accordance with funder policies
The publisher undertakes to provide management information including:
- Full expenditure data within and outside of the agreement ie subscriptions; OA APCs; extraneous publishing fees (eg, colour/over-length); read-and-publish fees
- The cumulative share of OA articles published in each journal
- Details of OA articles published in fully OA and subscriptions journals inclusive/exclusive of the agreement
- UK articles as a proportion of global output
- UK corresponding author article level data for all articles, including information on funder and licence type
- Details of which titles have "flipped to OA" that were previously paid for through subscriptions.
In addition, to support discussions with the transitional agreements oversight group, we seek the following:
- The number of titles expected to flip in the current calendar year
- Predicted expansion within each journal portfolio
- Predicted publication changes to journal portfolios
- Predicted proportion of OA articles of the total output for each hybrid title and overall, for each portfolio
6. Promote and embed open research practices, research integrity, standards, and trust in research and scholarship
We require publishers to demonstrate their commitment to common and open research practices, processes and systems, enabling research transparency and reproducibility.
This includes setting out commitments to improving research integrity and raising editorial standards, eg how they are enforcing editorial independence and editorial quality through technical, governance and policy improvements. "Make the research process and its outputs as open as possible by default and only as closed as necessary."
Finding a balance that upholds sustainable research practices within scholarly communication is essential to tackle the shift towards OA. It is recognised that the parameters of this balance will vary depending on discipline, institution and region.
Good practice includes:
Reproducibility
Publishers can endorse and promote the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) to encourage standardised data management and sharing. This ensures that research data are easily discoverable, well-documented, and usable by others for validation and building upon previous research. Publishers can also encourage authors to provide research contextualisation, data, methodologies, and analysis scripts openly available to enhance reproducibility.
Research transparency
Publishers can extend the aspects of the research process that are visible and accessible to others. This includes sharing not only the final research outcomes but all intermediate steps, such as data collection procedures, data processing, and any changes made during the research. Publishers can also adopt open citation policies, where citation data is made openly available for both human and machine access, notably enabling researchers to track the impact of their work more effectively.
CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy)
Providing standardised recognition for individual contributions to scholarly research. Allowing authors to specify contributions acknowledges the diverse contributions of researchers in a collaborative project.
Open Methods
Sharing detailed and comprehensive information about the research methodology used in research. This includes providing step-by-step instructions, materials used, and data collection procedures. Open methods facilitate the reproducibility of research.
Open peer review (OPR) and collegiate peer review
We encourage publishers to adopt initiatives to foster greater transparency and accountability in the peer review process
We require publishers to demonstrate their commitment to common and open research practices, processes and systems, enabling research transparency and reproducibility.
This includes setting out commitments to improving research integrity and raising editorial standards, eg how they are enforcing editorial independence and editorial quality through technical, governance and policy improvements. "Make the research process and its outputs as open as possible by default and only as closed as necessary."
Finding a balance that upholds sustainable research practices within scholarly communication is essential to tackle the shift towards OA. It is recognised that the parameters of this balance will vary depending on discipline, institution and region.
Good practice includes:
Reproducibility
Publishers can endorse and promote the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) to encourage standardised data management and sharing. This ensures that research data are easily discoverable, well-documented, and usable by others for validation and building upon previous research. Publishers can also encourage authors to provide research contextualisation, data, methodologies, and analysis scripts openly available to enhance reproducibility.
Research transparency
Publishers can extend the aspects of the research process that are visible and accessible to others. This includes sharing not only the final research outcomes but all intermediate steps, such as data collection procedures, data processing, and any changes made during the research. Publishers can also adopt open citation policies, where citation data is made openly available for both human and machine access, notably enabling researchers to track the impact of their work more effectively.
CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy)
Providing standardised recognition for individual contributions to scholarly research. Allowing authors to specify contributions acknowledges the diverse contributions of researchers in a collaborative project.
Open Methods
Sharing detailed and comprehensive information about the research methodology used in research. This includes providing step-by-step instructions, materials used, and data collection procedures. Open methods facilitate the reproducibility of research.
Open peer review (OPR) and collegiate peer review
We encourage publishers to adopt initiatives to foster greater transparency and accountability in the peer review process
These requirements apply to contracts negotiated from 2022 onwards between institutions, consortia (including Jisc) and publishers for open access journal agreements and are targeted at transitioning hybrid titles to open access. The requirements may be updated in response to developments in higher education (HE), research and changes to funder policies.
For transitional agreements that were not in place by 1 April 2022, publishers were asked to provide a funder compliant Green open access option to apply from 1 April 2022 until the start date of the new agreement. Where a publisher has decided not to offer this option and no suitable transitional agreement has been implemented, authors are encouraged to consider alternative publication venues or to utilise a rights retention statement in their submission to assert their right to self-archive their accepted manuscript to an institutional and/or subject repository with a CC-BY or other permissible licence (eg OGL). Some authors may find that their institution has an institutional rights retention policy in place that provides this assurance without the need to include a rights retention statement in the submitted manuscript; check with your institution if you are unsure.
Jisc will evaluate proposed agreements against these requirements and make the results of the evaluation available to the publisher. The evaluation will also make clear if a proposed agreement is compliant with current and prospective UK research funders’ policies and if so, whether eligible for open access funding. Agreements that meet the requirements and are accepted by the UK sector will be registered in the ESAC transformative agreements registry.
We have undertaken a review of transitional agreements to examine the rate, costs and progress in transitioning research outputs to immediate open access and determine where next for transitional agreements.
Current transitional agreements
- ACM open journals 2023-2025 (.pdf)
- AIP read and publish 2024-25 (.docx)
- Akadémiai Kiadó transitional agreement 2023-25 (.pdf)
- American Physical Society (APS) read and publish 2023-2025 (.pdf)
- American Psychological Association (APA) OA publishing pilot 2024-26 (.pdf)
- American Physiological Society read and publish 2025 (.docx)
- Bentham Science read and publish transitional agreement 2024-2025 (.pdf)
- Bioscientifica Journals read and publish 2025-2026 (.docx)
- BMJ – BMJ read and publish 2023-24 (one year extension) (.docx)
- Brill Journals read and publish 2025-26 (.pdf)
- Brill SHEDL read and publish agreement 2025-26 (.docx)
- Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press read and publish 2025-2026 (.docx)
- Company of Biologists read and publish 2025-2026 (.docx)
- CSIRO Publishing read and publish agreement 2024-2026 (.pdf)
- CUP – Cambridge University Press read and publish 2021-24 (one year extension) (.docx)
- European Respiratory Society read and publish 2025 (.docx)
- Future Science Group transitional agreement 2024-2025 (.pdf)
- Geological Society Lyell Collection read and publish transitional agreement 2024-2025 (.pdf)
- IOP read and publish agreement 2025-27 (.pdf)
- IWA Publishing (IWAP) Journals read and publish 2025 (.docx)
- Jisc collections de Gruyter journals and open access 2024-25 (.docx)
- John Benjamins read and publish agreement 2025-2026 (.pdf)
- Journal of Neuroscience read and publish 2025 (.docx)
- Karger SHEDL read and publish agreement 2023-2025 (.docx)
- Karger read and publish agreement 2025-2026 (.pdf)
- Microbiology Society read and publish 2024-25 (.docx)
- Optica read and publish 2025-27 licence (.pdf)
- OUP Full Collection read and publish agreement 2024-2025 (.pdf)
- Portland Press read and publish transitional agreement 2024-2025
- Rockefeller University Press read and publish transitional agreement 2024-2025
- Royal Irish Academy read and publish agreement 2025-2026 (.pdf)
- Sage Journals read and publish 2023-24 one year extension (.docx)
- Sage Journals SHEDL read and publish 2023-24 one year extension (.docx)
- Springer Nature read and publish agreement 2023-2025 (.pdf)
- Taylor and Francis read and publish agreement 2024-25 (.pdf)
- Thieme read and publish agreement 2024-25 (.pdf)
- The Royal Society read and publish 2025 (.docx)
- Wiley read and publish agreement 2024-2025 (.pdf)
- Wolters Kluwer read and publish pilot 2022-24 - one year extension (.docx)
- ACM open journals 2023-2025 (.pdf)
- AIP read and publish 2024-25 (.docx)
- Akadémiai Kiadó transitional agreement 2023-25 (.pdf)
- American Physical Society (APS) read and publish 2023-2025 (.pdf)
- American Psychological Association (APA) OA publishing pilot 2024-26 (.pdf)
- American Physiological Society read and publish 2025 (.docx)
- Bentham Science read and publish transitional agreement 2024-2025 (.pdf)
- Bioscientifica Journals read and publish 2025-2026 (.docx)
- BMJ – BMJ read and publish 2023-24 (one year extension) (.docx)
- Brill Journals read and publish 2025-26 (.pdf)
- Brill SHEDL read and publish agreement 2025-26 (.docx)
- Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press read and publish 2025-2026 (.docx)
- Company of Biologists read and publish 2025-2026 (.docx)
- CSIRO Publishing read and publish agreement 2024-2026 (.pdf)
- CUP – Cambridge University Press read and publish 2021-24 (one year extension) (.docx)
- European Respiratory Society read and publish 2025 (.docx)
- Future Science Group transitional agreement 2024-2025 (.pdf)
- Geological Society Lyell Collection read and publish transitional agreement 2024-2025 (.pdf)
- IOP read and publish agreement 2025-27 (.pdf)
- IWA Publishing (IWAP) Journals read and publish 2025 (.docx)
- Jisc collections de Gruyter journals and open access 2024-25 (.docx)
- John Benjamins read and publish agreement 2025-2026 (.pdf)
- Journal of Neuroscience read and publish 2025 (.docx)
- Karger SHEDL read and publish agreement 2023-2025 (.docx)
- Karger read and publish agreement 2025-2026 (.pdf)
- Microbiology Society read and publish 2024-25 (.docx)
- Optica read and publish 2025-27 licence (.pdf)
- OUP Full Collection read and publish agreement 2024-2025 (.pdf)
- Portland Press read and publish transitional agreement 2024-2025
- Rockefeller University Press read and publish transitional agreement 2024-2025
- Royal Irish Academy read and publish agreement 2025-2026 (.pdf)
- Sage Journals read and publish 2023-24 one year extension (.docx)
- Sage Journals SHEDL read and publish 2023-24 one year extension (.docx)
- Springer Nature read and publish agreement 2023-2025 (.pdf)
- Taylor and Francis read and publish agreement 2024-25 (.pdf)
- Thieme read and publish agreement 2024-25 (.pdf)
- The Royal Society read and publish 2025 (.docx)
- Wiley read and publish agreement 2024-2025 (.pdf)
- Wolters Kluwer read and publish pilot 2022-24 - one year extension (.docx)
Transformative journals (TJs)
While transitional agreements (TAs) repurpose existing subscription expenditure to fund open access publishing and read access across a collection of journal titles for an organisation or a consortium, a transformative journal (TJ) is a subscription/hybrid journal that is committed to transitioning to fully open access under certain conditions and to an agreed timescale, as per cOAlition S’ requirements.
To become a Jisc-approved transformative journal, a journal had first to register with cOAlition S and then meet one of two further Jisc requirements:
- The journal must be included in a Jisc-approved transitional agreement, or
- Enable authors to deposit their author’s accepted manuscript in repositories under the CC BY licence without embargo.
Such journals were compliant with most major UK research funders' open access mandates until the end of 2024. However cOAlition S no longer financially support Transformative Journals (TJs) and it is no longer possible to apply to become a TJ.
Existing TJs ceased to be eligible for UKRI open access funding after 31 December 2024.