A COMMITMENT TO THE GLOBAL RESEARCH COMMUNITY: THREE US ORGANIZATIONS REFLECT ON THEIR TRANSITION TO OPEN ACCESS

"The transition to open access (OA) supports the entire academic community by increasing the global reach, impact and reproducibility of research, and providing greater access. At Springer Nature, we have seen these benefits first-hand: on average, articles published gold OA achieve 6 times more downloads than non-OA articles, as well as 1.6 times more citations and 4.9 times more Altmetric attention.1 Publishers are working with the research community to accelerate the transition to OA, and have been implementing OA agreements on national, institutional and consortial levels. One example of an OA agreement is the transformative agreement (TA), which combines reading and publishing fees in one license, a model which Springer Nature has been pioneering since 2015. TAs are playing a vital role in driving the transition at scale. In 2022, TAs supported the OA status of 215,666 publications globally,2 and Springer Nature’s TAs published 3 times more gold OA articles in Springer hybrid titles than via authors choosing OA but not being part of a TA.3 Data from TAs across Europe is showing how they are vital to powering OA growth and a key part of enabling OA equity. TAs with Springer Nature now support researchers from over 3,500 institutions around the world, and help to deliver equity for OA publishing across academic disciplines, particularly for the Humanities and Social Sciences.4 The benefit to both researchers and institutions is clear: TAs enable more articles to be published gold OA, delivering superior value, usage and reach, as well as equity for OA publishing, at scale and speed. Implementing a TA with Springer Nature should not be a concern, especially when moving from a Big Deal agreement, as integration and access have already been established, with only low-touch approvals needed, depending on specific needs of customers. However, despite clear data from Europe about the benefits of OA and TAs, the transition to OA is not moving at the same pace worldwide. Whilst there has been an increasing number of OA mandates over the years, one of the latest being Plan S in Europe,5 the United States (US) has only recently followed suit on a national level with the 2022 memorandum released by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) which calls for federally funded publications and their supporting data to be publicly accessible without embargo from December 31, 2025.6 In 2020, we established our first TA in North America with the California Digital Library (CDL), which is demonstrating both an increase in articles and in downloads, as well as more equitable access for global readers including those who would not have had access otherwise (see Impact at University of California).7 The following case study explores the experience of transitioning to a TA, based on interviews with libraries and a consortium in the US, and the early impact of the TA in the US. Building on the experiences of the three organizations presented, we are actively speaking with more partners and are committed to playing our part in helping to drive the transition to OA."