An introductory guide to the UC model transformative agreement - Office of Scholarly Communication

"On the basis of these ideas, UC developed a unique “multi-payer” model for transformative agreements designed to engage authors and encourage shared funding between university library and research funds that can be replicated at other U.S. institutions. The model combines library funding — in the form of baseline financial support for all authors and full financial support for authors lacking grant funds — with an author workflow that asks authors with grant funding to pay a portion of the article publication costs. This is the model that UC proposed to Elsevier and that has formed the basis for our discussions with other publishers (including our April 2019 agreement with Cambridge University Press).

It is important to note that the co-funding elements of this model need not be limited to subscription publishers, but are intentionally designed for implementation with native open access publishers as well. The model is intended to create a level playing field for publishers of all types. Specific characteristics of the UC model include:

• Default open access. Open access is the default publication option for all UC corresponding authors who publish in the target publisher’s journals. Authors have the choice of opting out.
• Reading fee. The former subscription fee is greatly reduced and becomes a “reading” fee for access and perpetual rights to articles that are still behind a paywall.
  • UC has set its desired reading fee at 10% of the previous license fee, to allow for the bulk of the former subscription fee to be allocated to APC payments. The size of the reading fee recognizes that the proportion of closed to open access articles is decreasing as similar agreements are negotiated elsewhere around the globe.
• Discounted APCs. The library negotiates reduced article publication charges (APCs) with the publisher, to bring the overall costs of the agreement into an affordable range that can facilitate a rapid transition to open access while protecting both the university and the publisher from undue economic risk.
• Overall cost. In general, the total of all fees (reading fee + APCs) should be no more than the current licensing cost, possibly also including any existing APCs that have been paid outside the previous license agreement. To achieve this aim, negotiated APC discounts may be 30% or higher.
• Co-funding model. Publication fees are subject to a co-funding model involving both institutional (library) funds and author (grant) funds, in a unified workflow:
  • Library subvention. The library provides a baseline subvention to cover a significant portion of the publication fee for all authors (e.g., $1,000 per article).
  • Grant-funded authors. Authors with access to grant funding are asked to pay a remaining portion of the article publication fee at the time of acceptance if they are able to do so, to allow for sustainability and scalability over time.
  • Unfunded authors. The library covers the publication fee in full for authors without access to grant funding (e.g., many authors in the humanities and some in the social sciences). Authors indicate the need for this support after their article has been accepted, as part of the publisher’s standard APC payment workflow.
  • Author choice. Authors can opt out of open access and publish their articles behind a paywall at their discretion.
  • Aggregated library payments. All library-funded components (baseline subvention and full funding for authors lacking grants) are paid through direct, periodic bulk payments to the publisher; there is no need for authors to request funding explicitly from the library. However, the full article publication costs, including library subvention amounts, should be disclosed to authors in the publisher interface.
• Cost controls. Once established, the overall cost of the agreement varies up or down from year to year by a designated amount keyed to publication volume, to allow for gradual adjustments in response to author publishing behavior while allowing both the institution and the publisher to predictably manage costs.
  • UC’s model puts this standard variance at 2% — thus, the overall fees paid to the publisher can vary up or down by 2% per year...."