Read and publish agreements are a specific type of transformative agreement that bundle a library’s subscription-reading fee and its authors’ article processing charges (APCs) into one institutional payment, so corresponding authors publish open access without an individual invoice. This distinguishes them from the broader transformative-agreement category, which also includes publish-and-read and subscribe-to-open models, and matters now because cOAlition S has ended its funder support for hybrid open access delivered through these deals.
A transformative agreement is any publisher-library contract designed to shift journal revenue away from pure subscriptions and towards open access publishing, typically tracked and standardised through the ESAC Initiative’s public registry. Read and publish (R&P) is the most common variant, but librarians increasingly encounter publish-and-read (P&R) and subscribe-to-open (S2O) structures that allocate cost and access differently. This guide sets out the terminology, the cOAlition S policy shift, and a practical compliance checklist for UK library and research-office staff.
- What Is a Read and Publish Agreement?
- Read and Publish vs Transformative Agreements: What’s the Difference?
- How the ESAC Registry Standardises Transformative Agreement Terms
- Why cOAlition S Is Winding Down Support for Transformative Agreements
- UK Compliance Checklist for Librarians
- Frequently Asked Questions
- What This Means for UK Institutions
- Conclusion: Preparing for the Post-Transformative-Agreement Era
What Is a Read and Publish Agreement?
A read and publish agreement replaces two separate invoices — a subscription fee and per-article APCs — with a single negotiated payment covering both. The library retains reading access to a publisher’s journal package, and eligible corresponding authors publish open access at no additional cost, subject to the deal’s terms.
Cambridge University Press reports partnering with over 2,500 institutions globally under this model, with eligibility confirmed through an institutional checker rather than case-by-case approval. The Royal Society applies a comparable structure for CAUL institutions in Australia and New Zealand and for Vienna University, waiving the APC entirely for eligible papers.
Most UK read and publish deals — including those with Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, Oxford University Press and Cambridge — are negotiated nationally by Jisc, rather than by individual libraries.
Read and Publish vs Transformative Agreements: What’s the Difference?
Transformative agreement is the umbrella term; read and publish is one implementation of it. Treating the two as synonyms causes librarians to miss deals structured as publish-and-read or subscribe-to-open, which allocate payment differently and carry different compliance checks.
| Model | Payment structure | Who benefits | UK-relevant examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| Read and Publish (R&P) | Single fee bundles subscription access plus author APCs | Both readers and authors, in one contract | Cambridge, OUP, Elsevier, Wiley (via Jisc) |
| Publish and Read (P&R) | Fee is calculated primarily on publishing volume; reading access is included | Authors’ output drives the price; reading is a by-product | Common in Springer Nature and Wiley consortial deals |
| Subscribe to Open (S2O) | Standard subscription fee; journal flips to open access if enough libraries retain it | All readers globally, without an APC at all | Annual Reviews titles; opt-in by UK libraries |
| Generic transformative agreement | Any of the above, logged with standard terms in the ESAC registry | Varies by sub-type | Umbrella category for all ESAC-registered deals |
The practical consequence: a librarian auditing “transformative agreements” must check the payment trigger for each individual contract, not assume every deal behaves like a read and publish agreement.
How the ESAC Registry Standardises Transformative Agreement Terms
The ESAC Initiative (Efficiency and Standards for Article Charges) maintains a public registry of transformative agreements, logging each deal’s publisher, consortium, term dates and model type. It exists because early transformative agreements used inconsistent contract language, making cross-institutional comparison difficult for consortia and funders.
ESAC-registered status does not guarantee funder compliance on its own — it confirms the deal’s terms are publicly documented in a standard format. Librarians should still verify a specific agreement’s eligibility rules and expiry against their own corresponding-author list, since registration reflects the publisher-consortium contract, not individual-author entitlement.
Why cOAlition S Is Winding Down Support for Transformative Agreements
cOAlition S — the international group of research funders behind Plan S, including UKRI as a founding member — built transformative agreements and Transformative Journals into Plan S as a temporary bridge from subscription to full open access. That bridge had an explicit end point: funder support for hybrid open access delivered through Transformative Agreements and Transformative Journals concluded at the end of 2024, per cOAlition S’s Plan S implementation guidance.
The rationale: hybrid OA, where a subscription journal carries some open articles alongside paywalled ones, was never Plan S’s end state. Transformative agreements were funded only while publishers showed measurable progress toward full OA. cOAlition S’s subsequent “Towards Responsible Publishing” strategy shifts funder emphasis toward rights retention and diamond OA models that do not depend on APC-based transformative deals.
This does not mean every transformative agreement disappears overnight. Individual member funders retain discretion to support specific national deals, and non-cOAlition-S funders continue negotiating independently — which is why UK librarians need an ongoing compliance process, not a one-off terminology check.
UK Compliance Checklist for Librarians
Use this checklist when auditing or renewing any read and publish or transformative agreement covering UK-funded research:
- Confirm the deal’s ESAC registry entry, model type (R&P, P&R or S2O) and exact expiry date.
- Verify corresponding-author eligibility rules — most publishers check institutional email domain or ROR-linked affiliation, not co-author status.
- Track APC-equivalent usage against any annual cap; publish-and-read deals in particular can exhaust quotas faster than read-only estimates suggest.
- Reconfirm whether the underlying funder is a cOAlition S member and, if so, whether the article’s funder still recognises hybrid OA via this route post-2024.
- Cross-check the deal against Jisc’s national list rather than relying solely on the publisher’s own eligibility checker, since terms occasionally diverge.
- Brief researchers on coverage and caps before submission, not after acceptance, when publication cannot be easily switched to a different route.
- Log renewal or non-renewal decisions centrally, since cOAlition S’s reduced funder backing increases the chance that individual deals lapse rather than auto-renew.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a read and publish agreement?
A read and publish agreement is a transformative agreement in which a library’s subscription fee and its authors’ article processing charges are combined into a single institutional payment. Eligible corresponding authors then publish open access at no separate cost, provided they submit using their institutional affiliation before any usage cap is reached.
What is the meaning of “read and publish”?
The term describes the two rights an institution buys in one contract: the right to read a publisher’s subscription content, and the right for its authors to publish open access without individual APC invoices. It distinguishes this model from publish-and-read deals, where publishing volume — not reading access — sets the price.
Are transformative agreements ending completely in 2026?
No. cOAlition S has withdrawn funder-level financial endorsement of hybrid OA via transformative agreements after 2024, but individual publishers, consortia and non-cOAlition-S funders continue to negotiate and renew deals. Institutions should expect fewer new funder-backed agreements, not an immediate end to existing contracts.
Do UK institutions still need Jisc-negotiated deals?
Yes. Jisc remains the primary national negotiator for UK transformative agreements with major publishers, and most UK read and publish terms — eligibility, caps and pricing — are set through Jisc rather than by individual universities, regardless of cOAlition S’s funder-level policy changes.
What This Means for UK Institutions
UK institutions relying on transformative agreements to meet UKRI’s open access policy, which requires immediate open access for in-scope research articles, should treat cOAlition S’s reduced backing as a signal to diversify routes, not a reason to panic. Green open access via repository deposit, rights-retention strategies, and diamond OA venues matter more as funder-endorsed transformative agreements become less certain to renew on current terms.
Expect renewal negotiations to take longer and terms to tighten, particularly for publish-and-read structures where output growth already strains usage caps. Building the checklist above into annual deal reviews, rather than a one-time terminology exercise, is the practical response.
Conclusion: Preparing for the Post-Transformative-Agreement Era
Read and publish agreements will not vanish in 2026, but the funder scaffolding that expanded them — cOAlition S’s Plan S support for hybrid OA — has been removed. UK librarians who can distinguish R&P from P&R and S2O, check ESAC registry status, and verify funder-specific eligibility will be better placed to advise researchers as individual deals renew, tighten or lapse over coming cycles.
For related terminology, see the CASRAI Dictionary and the broader context on institutional open-research policy in research administration.
