Charting Sweden's path beyond transformative agreements – analysis and proposals for strategic direction

"The beyond transformative agreements working group has been tasked with proposing a strategy for transitioning from transformative agreements to a financially sustainable system that stimulates the ongoing transition to a fully open publishing system. Drawing on the group's research and discussions about various courses of action, a number of recommendations have been made. The group contends that it is vital for control of scholarly publication to reside in the research community, while also emphasising the need to reduce publication costs. The group’s primary recommendation, therefore, is that the Bibsam Consortium should refrain from entering read and publish agreements in hybrid journals, beginning in 2026 at the latest. Instead, it should only sign agreements for publication in fully open access journals. For this stance to be feasible during negotiations with publishers and successfully implemented in practice, various complementary and supporting strategic initiatives and actions also need to be carried out. These include: • Signing agreements with publishers that only publish open access journals. • Providing a national independent publishing platform. • Improving the opportunities for migrating researcher-owned journals from traditional publishers to other platforms. • Continuing to work with copyright issues related to open access..."