A read and publish agreement is a single institutional contract that bundles a library’s journal-subscription payments with its authors’ open-access publishing fees, so researchers publish open access without paying an individual Article Processing Charge (APC). It is one of several mechanisms institutions use to satisfy funder open-access mandates such as Plan S, alongside publish-and-read deals, transformative journals, and APC waivers.
A read and publish agreement is defined by having two payment components in one contract: a fee for reading (subscription access) and a fee for publishing (open-access output) from the same institution to the same publisher.
- What is a read and publish agreement?
- How the model satisfies Plan S without per-article APCs
- Read-and-publish vs publish-and-read vs transformative journals
- Cost-recovery mechanics for libraries
- Frequently asked questions
- Implications and outlook
What is a read and publish agreement?
A read and publish (RAP) agreement is a contract between a library or consortium and a publisher that consolidates two previously separate payment streams — subscription access and per-article open-access fees — into one negotiated sum. Corresponding authors affiliated with the subscribing institution can then publish open access in the publisher’s eligible journals without submitting an individual APC invoice.
RAP contracts emerged from the broader category of transformative agreements: deals designed to shift a publisher’s revenue away from subscription reading and towards open-access publishing over a defined term. The Scholarly Kitchen’s 2019 primer on transformative agreements, still the reference framework cited across library literature, formalised the RAP/PAR distinction that libraries and publishers use today.
- Eligibility is normally restricted to the corresponding author at a subscribing institution.
- Coverage typically spans a publisher’s hybrid and fully open-access journal portfolio, though scope varies by contract.
- Most agreements carry an annual article quota or budget cap; once exhausted, further OA publishing may require a separate APC or wait until the next contract year.
How the model satisfies Plan S without per-article APCs
Plan S, the policy coordinated by the funder consortium cOAlition S, requires that research outputs from participating funders be made immediately open access, either in a fully OA journal or platform, or via a compliant route within a subscription journal. A read and publish agreement satisfies this by making every eligible article OA on publication as a contractual default, removing the author’s need to source separate APC funding.
Because the institution has already paid for publishing rights as part of the bundled fee, the author’s compliance obligation is met automatically at acceptance, provided the article falls within the agreement’s scope and quota. This is the core mechanic that distinguishes RAP deals from a standard hybrid-journal APC waiver, which still requires a case-by-case funding decision.
cOAlition S’s Guidance on the Implementation of Plan S treats transformative agreements as a transitional compliance route, not a permanent end state. Under that guidance, newly negotiated transformative contracts concluded from 2020 were capped at a maximum three-year term and required a defined scenario for full conversion to open access once the contract expired — meaning agreements negotiated in this window needed a stated end date for reliance on the subscription-plus-publishing model, generally landing around 2024.
Read-and-publish vs publish-and-read vs transformative journals
Institutions encounter several related mechanisms that all aim at Plan S compliance but differ in who pays, for what, and how the cost falls across a consortium.
| Mechanism | Payment structure | Who bears cost in a consortium | Typical compliance route |
|---|---|---|---|
| Read-and-publish (RAP) | Reading fee + publishing fee, bundled | All member libraries share read-access cost | Transformative agreement |
| Publish-and-read (PAR) | Publishing fee only; reading included | Cost falls mainly on institutions whose authors publish | Transformative agreement |
| Transformative journal | Per-article APC, but journal commits to OA growth targets | Individual author/funder pays per article | Direct Plan S-compliant route (time-limited by cOAlition S) |
| APC waiver | No payment; fee reduced or removed case-by-case | Publisher absorbs cost, often for LMIC authors | Discretionary, publisher- or policy-specific |
The Scholarly Kitchen’s framework draws the RAP/PAR line precisely: a Read-and-Publish agreement charges the publisher for both reading and publishing in one contract, while a Publish-and-Read agreement charges only for publishing, with reading access included at no further cost. Germany’s DEAL consortium agreement with Wiley illustrates the PAR variant concretely: the negotiated Publish&Read fee for hybrid open-access articles was set at €2,750 per article, fixed for the three-year term of the contract, with legacy subscription payments folded into that single per-article rate.
Transformative journals are a distinct, narrower mechanism: individual hybrid journals commit to year-on-year OA growth targets in exchange for continued Plan S eligibility, but authors (or their funders) still pay a per-article APC — the mechanism a general RAP deal is specifically designed to avoid.
Cost-recovery mechanics for libraries
Libraries typically negotiate RAP and PAR deals with a cost-neutrality target: the new bundled fee should approximate prior subscription spend, redirected rather than added to. In practice, outcomes vary. Some negotiated agreements land close to cost-neutral; others increase total spend once publishing volume is factored in, particularly where no article-volume cap or price ceiling is agreed.
The ESAC Initiative (Efficiency and Standards for Article Charges), coordinated by the Max Planck Digital Library, maintains a public registry of signed transformative agreements and a set of negotiation principles — cost transparency, author copyright retention (typically via a CC BY licence), and a defined transition pathway — that most library consortia now use as a negotiating baseline. In the UK, Jisc Collections’ Requirements for Transformative Open Access Agreements sets equivalent expectations for higher-education institutions negotiating on a national basis.
Article Processing Charges outside a RAP contract remain the counterfactual libraries are trying to avoid. Analyses of Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)-listed gold OA titles have found APCs ranging from roughly $500 to $6,000, with an average close to $2,000 per article — a cost that scales directly with an institution’s publication volume when paid individually rather than bundled.
- Cambridge University Press states its global transformative agreements let authors at over 1,000 institutions publish OA at no direct cost to the author.
- UK consortium deals are negotiated centrally by Jisc; Australian and New Zealand deals are negotiated by the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL).
- Consortium-level PAR deals shift more of the cost burden onto institutions with higher publishing output, unlike RAP deals where read-access cost is shared more evenly.
Frequently asked questions
What is a read and publish agreement?
A read and publish agreement is a contract in which a publisher receives a single bundled payment from a library or consortium covering both subscription reading access and open-access publishing fees for the institution’s corresponding authors. It replaces individual APC invoicing with one negotiated, institution-level cost.
What is the meaning of “read and publish” versus “publish and read”?
“Read and publish” means the publisher is paid separately for reading and publishing within one contract, whereas “publish and read” (PAR) means the publisher is paid only for publishing, with reading access supplied at no additional cost. The distinction affects how cost is apportioned across a library consortium.
How much does the average APC cost?
Gold open-access APCs typically range from around $500 to $6,000 per article, with studies of DOAJ-listed journals putting the average close to $2,000. A read and publish agreement absorbs this variable, per-article cost into one predictable annual institutional fee.
Implications and outlook
For research administrators, RAP and PAR agreements simplify Plan S compliance tracking: instead of monitoring individual APC waiver requests, the compliance question becomes whether a given journal and author fall within an already-signed contract’s scope and remaining quota. This shifts administrative effort from transaction-level approval to portfolio-level negotiation and monitoring.
cOAlition S has consistently framed transformative agreements as transitional rather than terminal, with time-limited terms built into its Plan S guidance. Institutions relying on RAP or PAR deals should treat quota caps, contract renewal dates, and each publisher’s stated conversion pathway to full open access as the operational details that determine whether Plan S compliance holds for the full contract term — not an assumption that any signed agreement guarantees indefinite coverage.
Research administrators evaluating a publisher’s OA agreement should check it against the institution’s affiliated research administration policy and confirm how corresponding-author eligibility is determined, since eligibility criteria are central to whether an individual article is actually covered — a determination closely tied to authorship and corresponding-author status on the submitted manuscript.
