Offsetting as a path to full Open Access: MIT and the Royal Society of Chemistry sign first North American ‘read and publish’ agreement – IO: In The Open

"Over the past few years the MIT Libraries – like many US research libraries– have been watching with interest the development of “offsetting” agreements in Europe and the UK.  In offsetting agreements, a single license incorporates costs associated with access to paywalled articles and costs associated with open access publication.   This type of agreement has emerged in Europe and the UK and been the source of both new deals and broken deals.

In the MIT Libraries, we have been following this offsetting approach closely, as it seems to have the potential to transition subscription-based journals to a fully open access model."