The insanity (and probably illegality) of transformative agreements (including Plan S and Project Deal) - An Open Letter to Libraries and Coalition S | Gunther Eysenbach's random research rants

So-called "transformative agreements" (which seems to be central to Coalition S/Plan S) are done with the best intentions to increase the number of OA journals, but pose a mortal threat to existing smaller/medium and society open access journals, directing manuscripts to the large publishers who have a prepaid APC deal with libraries or consortia under such transformative agreements, away from existing OA journals. In essence, public funds are used to help large commercial companies to switch to a business model they have long resisted, instead of positively directing funds to existing OA publishers who did not have the luxury to make billions with the business model of reselling academic content in toll-access journals.