CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: esac transformative agreements

  • ACM Open Access vs Plan S: 2026 Compliance Check

    ACM open access is now the default, not an option: since 1 January 2026 the Association for Computing Machinery publishes all journals, conference proceedings and magazines under a fully open-access model, replacing its previous hybrid Read & Publish arrangement. Under the CC BY licence, zero-embargo release and author-retained copyright that now apply across the ACM Digital Library, the model satisfies cOAlition S’s Plan S licensing, immediacy and rights-retention requirements — closing a compliance gap that existed while ACM operated as a transformative agreement.

    ACM Open is the Read & Publish framework through which participating institutions pay a fixed annual fee, based on their average publishing output over the previous three years, in exchange for unlimited open-access publishing by their corresponding authors and full institutional read access to the ACM Digital Library.

    What is ACM open access?

    As of 1 January 2026, ACM transitioned every journal, magazine and conference proceeding in the ACM Digital Library to full open access, removing the mixed subscription/hybrid model that had applied since the ACM Open programme launched in 2020. The ACM Digital Library itself was split into two tiers on the same date: a free Basic edition giving open access to ACM’s full published corpus, and a paid Premium edition adding discovery tools, usage metrics, citation management and the ACM Guide to Computing Literature.

    Institutional participation still runs through ACM Open, ACM’s Read & Publish framework. Corresponding authors at a subscribing institution publish an unlimited number of open-access articles without paying an article processing charge (APC) directly; the institution instead pays one fixed annual fee tied to its historical publishing volume. Authors at non-participating institutions can still publish open access but may be liable for an APC.

    What does Plan S actually require?

    Plan S is the funder-driven open-access mandate coordinated by cOAlition S, a consortium of national and charitable research funders including UKRI, Wellcome and members of the European Research Council network. It sets three non-negotiable conditions for compliant publication, in force since the policy’s 2021 implementation date:

    • Licensing — the published article must carry a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence, or an equivalent that permits free reuse, as a default condition.
    • Immediacy — there can be no embargo period; the Version of Record, or an accepted manuscript carrying the same licence, must be open at the moment of publication.
    • Rights retention — authors, not publishers, must retain the rights needed to comply, formalised in cOAlition S’s Rights Retention Strategy (RRS), which lets funded authors apply a CC BY licence to their accepted manuscript regardless of the publisher’s own copyright terms.

    cOAlition S also phased out support for hybrid and transformative-journal routes: funding for APCs in hybrid subscription journals was withdrawn after 2024, meaning publishers relying on transformative agreements needed to complete a full flip to open access to remain straightforwardly fundable under Plan S.

    Does ACM Open satisfy cOAlition S requirements?

    Measured against each Plan S condition, ACM’s current model clears the bar directly rather than through a transitional workaround. The table below maps ACM’s terms to the three cOAlition S requirements.

    Plan S requirement ACM Open / ACM Digital Library position
    CC BY licence by default CC BY is the default licence under ACM Open; authors may select an alternative Creative Commons licence such as CC BY-NC-ND where a funder permits it.
    No embargo (immediacy) Zero embargo — the Version of Record is openly accessible in the ACM Digital Library at the point of publication for every ACM title.
    Author/institution rights retention ACM ceased requiring copyright transfer from authors; authors grant ACM a non-exclusive licence to publish rather than assigning copyright, satisfying the Rights Retention Strategy.
    Sustainable, transparent cost model ACM Open’s Read & Publish fee is fixed for the agreement term and based on three-year historical output, giving institutions a predictable APC-equivalent cost.

    The practical effect for a cOAlition S-funded computer scientist is that publishing in an ACM venue no longer requires checking whether a specific journal is “transformative” or tracking an embargo clock — the open-access, CC BY, zero-embargo position now applies uniformly across the ACM catalogue.

    What happened to ACM’s transformative agreements?

    Before the January 2026 flip, ACM Open operated as a transformative agreement: a Read & Publish deal under which subscription revenue was gradually redirected toward open-access publishing, with the expectation that the journal portfolio would eventually convert fully to open access. UK higher-education institutions negotiated ACM Open terms through Jisc, whose subscriptions catalogue still lists the prior “ACM OPEN Journals 2023-2025” agreement as the precursor arrangement that libraries used to budget for the transition.

    ACM’s own SIGGRAPH leadership signalled the scale of this shift well in advance: in a June 2024 community Q&A, ACM SIGGRAPH chair Jonathan Aldrich stated that ACM anticipated 60-65% or more of authors would already be covered by institutional open-access agreements by the time of the full transition, with the remainder needing an author-paid or waiver route. That anticipated coverage gap is precisely what the January 2026 full flip was designed to close, since every article — not just those from ACM Open institutions — is now open access regardless of the author’s institutional agreement status.

    What this means for institutions and researchers

    For research administrators tracking funder compliance, ACM’s flip removes a recurring due-diligence step: computer-science output published with ACM no longer needs an individual title-by-title check against a cOAlition S-approved transformative journal list, because the requirement is now met at the publisher level. Institutions still weighing whether to join ACM Open should note that the Read & Publish fee is separate from open-access compliance itself — declining to subscribe does not make an ACM article closed, but it may shift APC liability onto individual authors or their grants.

    For authors publishing under UKRI, Horizon Europe or other cOAlition S-aligned funder mandates, the practical takeaway is that ACM venues can now be selected on scholarly merit without a separate compliance audit — a meaningful simplification for research administrators supporting authors across computing, information systems and related interdisciplinary fields.

    Frequently asked questions

    What is ACM open access?

    ACM open access refers to ACM’s publishing model, under which, as of January 2026, all ACM journals, conference proceedings and magazines are freely accessible with no reader-side subscription barrier. Authors retain copyright and publish under a CC BY licence by default, typically funded through their institution’s ACM Open Read & Publish agreement rather than a per-article fee.

    Is ACM open access free for readers?

    Yes. The ACM Digital Library’s Basic edition gives free, open-access reading of ACM’s full published corpus. A separate paid Premium edition exists, but it adds discovery and analytics tools rather than gating access to the research articles themselves.

    Does ACM’s open-access model satisfy Plan S?

    Yes. ACM’s default CC BY licence, zero-embargo release of the Version of Record, and author rights retention policy together meet all three of cOAlition S’s core Plan S conditions, without relying on a transformative-agreement exception.

    What licence does ACM Open use?

    ACM Open’s default licence is CC BY (Creative Commons Attribution), which permits free reuse with attribution and satisfies cOAlition S’s licensing requirement. Authors may request an alternative Creative Commons licence, such as CC BY-NC-ND, where their funder’s terms allow it.

    Looking ahead

    ACM’s move puts one of computing’s two dominant scholarly publishers — alongside IEEE, which retains a hybrid subscription model for most titles — fully inside the Plan S compliance perimeter without caveats. For funders and institutions monitoring discipline-specific open-access uptake, ACM’s flip is a useful signal that field-specific societies can complete a full transition to open access while keeping a Read & Publish fee structure recognisable to library budgets. Research administrators supporting computer-science authors should update internal compliance checklists to reflect that ACM no longer requires case-by-case verification against transformative-journal criteria.

  • Plan S Wikipedia vs cOAlition S: What Changed

    Plan S is an initiative for open-access science publishing, launched in September 2018 by cOAlition S, a consortium of research funders. Wikipedia’s article on Plan S is broadly accurate on the initiative’s origins and ten principles, but its most-cited figures on transformative agreements, rights-retention uptake, and coalition membership are frozen between 2021 and 2023 — and the article makes no mention of cOAlition S’s own Strategy for 2026-2030, published in November 2025.

    Plan S is the requirement, backed by cOAlition S funders, that peer-reviewed research they fund be made immediately and freely available in a compliant open-access journal, platform, or repository, without embargo, under an open licence.

    What does Wikipedia say about Plan S?

    Wikipedia’s “Plan S” article opens by describing the initiative as a consortium of national research agencies and funders from twelve European countries, requiring that publicly funded research be published in open repositories or fully open-access journals by 2021. It correctly identifies cOAlition S as the coordinating body and lists the ten founding principles set out in the original implementation guidance.

    The article also notes real, later developments: the extension of the compliance deadline from 2020 to 2021, the Rights Retention Strategy, an October 2023 proposal to explore publishing models without author-facing fees (“diamond” open access), and a 2024 Gates Foundation policy shift described as not fully aligned with Plan S. This shows the page is edited, not abandoned — but the edits are sparse and several core figures have not been touched in years.

    Where the Wikipedia article holds up

    Several elements of Wikipedia’s account remain a fair summary of Plan S as it was designed. The ten principles — author copyright retention, standardised and capped publication fees, funder-level monitoring of compliance, and the explicit statement that hybrid open-access journals do not satisfy the key principle — match the original guidance released by the Science Europe-coordinated task force on 27 November 2018.

    The licensing detail is also accurate: compliant articles must carry a CC BY 4.0 licence, or alternatively CC BY-SA 4.0 or CC0, and journals must meet baseline peer-review standards consistent with guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and listing in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). None of this has changed, and Wikipedia states it correctly.

    Where the record is stale

    The gaps are concentrated in exactly the areas that move fastest: funding mechanics, uptake statistics, and coalition scope. The table below sets Wikipedia’s wording against cOAlition S’s own published record.

    Wikipedia’s claim Current cOAlition S position Source
    Transformative agreement contracts “may not last beyond 2023” cOAlition S confirmed in January 2023 that member funding for transformative arrangements would continue but cease entirely on 31 December 2024, with no new agreements accepted after 30 June 2023 cOAlition S, “cOAlition S confirms the end of its financial support for Open Access publishing under transformative arrangements after 2024”
    Rights Retention Strategy uptake given “as of October 2021 … over 500 works” No comparable running total has been added since; the Strategy remains active guidance with no current uptake figure cited on the page cOAlition S Rights Retention Strategy guidance (ongoing)
    Lede describes cOAlition S as funders “from twelve European countries” Membership and policy alignment now extends beyond that founding European core, as the article’s own later reference to the Gates Foundation’s 2024 policy shift illustrates cOAlition S member list; Wikipedia “Plan S” article, “Policy changes by member organizations” section
    No mention of a forward strategy beyond 2023-24 developments cOAlition S published its Strategy for 2026-2030 in November 2025, setting three strategic priorities across two implementation phases cOAlition S, “cOAlition S Strategy for 2026-2030”

    None of this makes the Wikipedia article wrong about what Plan S was. It makes the article an increasingly incomplete guide to what Plan S is now — a distinction that matters for anyone citing it in a policy brief, grant compliance note, or institutional guidance document.

    What cOAlition S’s 2026-2030 strategy adds

    cOAlition S’s Strategy for 2026-2030, published in November 2025, is the most authoritative recent statement of where the coalition is heading, and it is entirely absent from Wikipedia’s coverage. The strategy sets three strategic priorities: reinforcing the foundations for full, immediate, and equitable open access to peer-reviewed articles; supporting the digital infrastructure that underpins open access; and exploring financially sustainable and equitable publishing models while tracking their outcomes.

    Implementation runs in two phases. Phase one (2026-2027) concentrates on foundational work, digital infrastructure, and member services. Phase two (2028-2030) is intended to deepen work on sustainability and equity, subject to review of phase-one outcomes by the Leaders Group. This phased structure directly supersedes the transitional, 2018-2023 “transformative agreement” framing that still anchors Wikipedia’s implementation section.

    • Three strategic priorities replace the earlier single-minded focus on the 2021 compliance deadline.
    • A defined two-phase timetable (2026-2027, then 2028-2030) gives institutions a planning horizon Wikipedia’s article does not mention.
    • Financial support for transformative arrangements ended on 31 December 2024, closing a funding route Wikipedia still frames as open until “2023”.

    Common questions

    What is Plan S in open access?

    Plan S requires that peer-reviewed publications resulting from research funded by cOAlition S members be made immediately open access on publication, with no embargo, under an open licence such as CC BY 4.0. Authors must retain copyright. The requirement applied to grants awarded from 1 January 2021 onward.

    What are the five pillars of Wikipedia?

    Wikipedia operates on five pillars: it functions as an encyclopedia, is written from a neutral point of view, offers free content anyone can use or edit, expects civility among editors, and has no firm rules. Those norms explain why fast-moving funder guidance, like Plan S’s, can lag behind primary sources between volunteer edits.

    What this means for institutions and publishers

    Research administrators, library staff, and publishers who cite Wikipedia’s Plan S article as a compliance reference should treat it as a starting point, not a current-state document. Anyone advising on plan s open access obligations should verify funding-route and deadline details directly against cOAlition S’s guidance pages before applying them to a grant, agreement, or institutional policy — particularly anything touching transformative agreements, which stopped receiving cOAlition S funding at the end of 2024, not 2023.

    This pattern is not unique to Plan S. Fast-moving standards and funder mandates routinely outrun general-reference encyclopedia coverage, which depends on volunteer editors noticing and sourcing each change. The practical fix is straightforward: use Wikipedia to orient, then confirm operative dates, funding rules, and current strategic priorities against the originating body’s own published guidance.

    For related standards and terminology used across research administration, see CASRAI’s open research dictionary and the research administration pillar.

  • cOAlition S’s 2020 Open Access Pledge: What It Actually Delivered

    cOAlition S did not make full open access a reality by its original 2020 deadline: the target date slipped to 1 January 2021, and universal compliance was never achieved. But six years on, funder-mandated open access rose to roughly 80% among cOAlition S members against a ~60% global average, and the coalition’s November 2025 strategy for 2026-2030 now formally retires the transitional tools — transformative agreements — that got it there.

    Coalition S making open access a reality by 2020 was the literal title of the press release that launched cOAlition S on 4 September 2018. Plan S is the funder-led policy framework, built around ten principles, that requires publications from participating funders to appear immediately in compliant open access venues. This article measures that founding pledge against the evidence cOAlition S itself has since published, including its 2023 Annual Review and its 2026-2030 Strategy.

    What did cOAlition S actually pledge in 2018?

    cOAlition S launched on 4 September 2018 as a consortium of national research funders, backed by the European Commission and the European Research Council, built around Plan S. The founding press release stated the commitment without qualification: “By 2020 scientific publications that result from research funded by public grants provided by participating national and European research councils and funding bodies, must be published in compliant Open Access Journals or on compliant Open Access Platforms.”

    That single sentence became the coalition’s defining test. It set an absolute deadline, a binary compliance standard, and no allowance for a phased transition. Eleven national funders signed at launch; the coalition’s own 2026-2030 strategy document now describes the founding cohort as twelve organisations, reflecting late additions before the ink dried.

    What has Plan S delivered since 2018?

    Plan S delivered a measurable, sustained rise in open access output among its funders, and it forced publishers to the negotiating table. It did not deliver the literal 2020 deadline, which the coalition itself extended by a year.

    According to cOAlition S’s Annual Review 2023, funders in the coalition have consistently maintained open access rates of approximately 80% for their supported research, compared with a global average of around 60%. An independent assessment, Galvanising the open access community: A study on the impact of Plan S (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.13738479), credits cOAlition S with raising the profile of open access globally and pulling major publishers into transformative agreement negotiations they had previously resisted.

    Membership also grew far beyond the original European core. The coalition now counts 28 funders, spanning organisations in Europe, North America, Jordan, Zambia, South Africa and Australia, according to the cOAlition S Strategy 2026-2030 document.

    Where did the 2020 promise fall short?

    The 2020 deadline itself was the first casualty. Following sustained feedback from researchers and publishers, cOAlition S pushed implementation back to 1 January 2021, a full year after the date named in the founding pledge.

    Beyond timing, the mechanism used to hit the target created new problems. Plan S leaned heavily on Article Processing Charges and “read and publish” transformative agreements — deals in which institutions redirected subscription spending into publishing fees. This accelerated compliance but shifted cost from readers to authors, disadvantaging researchers at less-resourced institutions and smaller, society-run journals unable to negotiate comparable deals.

    • The original 1 January 2020 compliance date was never met as stated; it moved to 1 January 2021.
    • Compliance was achieved through paid publishing routes (APCs, transformative agreements) rather than the fee-free access the founding rhetoric implied.
    • cOAlition S formally ended financial support for transformative agreements and transformative journals from 31 December 2024, acknowledging the model’s limits.
    • Equity across regions and institution types remained unresolved, a gap the coalition’s own 2026-2030 strategy names directly.

    How does the 2026-2030 strategy change course?

    The cOAlition S Strategy 2026-2030, published 12 November 2025, is the coalition’s own evidence-based reckoning with the 2018 pledge. It does not claim victory; it explicitly reframes the goal around sustainability and equity rather than a single compliance date.

    The strategy sets three priorities, phased across an initial 2026-2027 period and a subsequent 2028-2030 period subject to review by the Leaders Group.

    Dimension 2018 founding pledge 2026-2030 strategy position
    Deadline 1 January 2020, unconditional No fixed date; phased two-stage implementation to 2030
    Membership 11-12 national funders plus EC/ERC support 28 funders across six regions
    Primary route Compliant OA journals/platforms, APC-driven Diamond OA, Publish-Review-Curate models, preprints
    Transformative agreements Actively funded as a transition tool Funding ended 31 December 2024
    Measured outcome Aspirational 100% compliance ~80% OA rate reported (2023 Annual Review) vs ~60% global average

    Science magazine characterised the new strategy as retreating from “strict requirements,” favouring alternatives to paywalled journals without an expressed goal of supplanting them entirely — a materially softer posture than the 2018 launch language.

    Common questions about Plan S’s track record

    Did Plan S achieve open access by 2020?

    No. cOAlition S extended its own deadline to 1 January 2021 after publisher and researcher feedback, and universal compliance was never reached. What Plan S did achieve was a sustained ~80% open access rate among its funders by 2023 — well above the global average, but short of the “full and immediate” pledge for all funded output.

    What happened to transformative agreements?

    cOAlition S stopped financially supporting transformative agreements and transformative journals from 31 December 2024. The 2026-2030 strategy redirects funder support toward diamond open access, Publish-Review-Curate models and preprints, treating transformative agreements as a transitional tool that had run its course rather than a permanent solution.

    How many funders belong to cOAlition S today?

    cOAlition S has grown from an initial 11-12 national funders in 2018 to 28 member organisations by 2025, now spanning funders in Europe, North America, Jordan, Zambia, South Africa and Australia, according to the coalition’s own 2026-2030 strategy document.

    What this means for funders, institutions and publishers

    Research funders modelling future open access mandates should treat the 2018-2020 episode as a case study in the gap between a compliance deadline and compliance reality. A hard date without an equity mechanism generates rapid but uneven adoption, concentrated among well-resourced institutions able to pay APCs.

    Institutions and research administration offices tracking funder mandates should note that transformative agreements are no longer a durable compliance route beyond 2024; budget planning should shift toward diamond and non-APC venues the 2026-2030 strategy now prioritises. Publishers, particularly smaller and society-run titles, gain a longer runway under the phased 2026-2027 and 2028-2030 structure than the original single-date ultimatum allowed.

    The verdict: catalyst, not completed reality

    cOAlition S’s 2018 pledge to make open access “a reality by 2020” was not literally kept. The deadline moved, the mechanism proved inequitable, and the coalition has now formally abandoned the tool that carried it furthest. What the pledge did deliver was momentum: an ~80% funder-level open access rate, a fourfold growth in membership, and a global policy conversation that persists into the 2026-2030 strategy. Judged as a compliance deadline, Plan S fell short. Judged as a catalyst for structural change in scholarly publishing, its six-year record is substantial, and its authors now say so themselves.

  • Diamond Open Access vs Gold Open Access in 2026

    Diamond open access vs gold open access comes down to who pays: diamond OA charges neither author nor reader, funded instead by institutions, funders, or learned societies, while gold OA typically requires an author-facing article processing charge (APC) to make the published version free to read. Since cOAlition S’s 2026-2030 strategy stopped funding transformative agreements and redirected support toward diamond models, authors now face a genuinely different set of funder incentives when choosing a route.

    Diamond open access is a scholarly publishing model in which a journal or platform makes the version of record freely available to readers immediately on publication, without charging authors any fee, because publication costs are covered by non-commercial funders, universities, or community consortia rather than by the researcher.

    What is the difference between diamond and gold open access?

    Gold open access “embraces both journals supported by APCs or by other means of funding,” according to the definition used across the scholarly-communications literature — it is defined by immediate, free-to-read publication, not by any single funding mechanism. In practice, most gold OA venues from commercial and society publishers do charge an APC, often running into thousands of pounds per article.

    Diamond open access is narrower and stricter: no author fee, no reader fee, ever. The 2021 Open Access Diamond Journals Study, commissioned by cOAlition S and Science Europe, found that diamond journals make up roughly 73% of all open access journals registered in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), yet account for only 8–9% of total OA articles published each year — most are small, discipline- or region-specific titles, with 54.4% publishing 25 or fewer articles annually.

    Feature Diamond open access Gold open access
    Author fee (APC) None Usually charged (commercial/hybrid publishers)
    Reader fee None None (once published)
    Typical funder Institutions, learned societies, government, consortia Author/institution APC, Read & Publish deals
    Ownership model Community-led, non-profit Often publisher-owned, for-profit
    Median cost per article (2021 study) ~$200 (in-kind + volunteer labour) Frequently £1,500–£3,000+ APC
    Regional strength Latin America (~95% of OA journals are diamond) Europe, North America (APC-funded)

    What did cOAlition S’s 2026-2030 strategy actually change?

    cOAlition S launched Plan S in 2018 with an ambitious 2021 compliance deadline for full, immediate open access. From 31 December 2024, cOAlition S stopped financially supporting transformative agreements and transformative journals — the “Read & Publish” deals that funders had previously used to help subscription publishers transition to gold OA. That withdrawal is the single biggest practical change for authors: funder money that once flowed toward APC-based Read & Publish deals is being redirected instead.

    The coalition’s 2026-2030 strategy, run in two phases (2026-2027, then 2028-2030), commits to “enhancing the focus on sustainable and equitable models, such as PRC, diamond open access and preprints” and explicitly names the dominance of APCs, book processing charges, and Read & Publish agreements as having “contributed to a growth in open access publishing but also led to increasing costs” — costs the coalition says fall hardest on researchers at less-resourced institutions.

    Coalition-wide infrastructure has followed the policy shift. The European Diamond Capacity Hub (EDCH) launched on 15 January 2025 in Madrid, offering diamond publishers a shared registry, guidelines, training platform, and publishing tools. This builds on the Horizon Europe-funded DIAMAS project (2022–2025) and the March 2022 Action Plan for Diamond Open Access, co-authored by cOAlition S, Science Europe, OPERAS, and the French National Research Agency (ANR).

    None of this abolishes gold OA. Independent tracking cited alongside the new strategy shows gold open access articles grew from 14% of publications in 2014 to 40% in 2024, while subscription-only access fell from 70% to 54% over the same decade — gold remains the largest single OA route by volume. What has changed is funder appetite for underwriting its APC costs through transformative deals.

    Which route should authors choose now?

    For most authors, the decision now turns on three questions: does a credible diamond venue exist in your field, does your funder mandate immediate OA with a specific route, and can you or your institution absorb an APC if gold is the only realistic option.

    • Funder mandate first. Check whether your funder is a cOAlition S signatory (e.g. UKRI, several Horizon Europe funders) and whether its post-2024 policy still counts a Read & Publish deal as compliant, or whether it now favours diamond/PRC routes and rights retention instead.
    • Field coverage. Diamond OA is strongest in humanities, social sciences, and Latin American-led research; it is thinner in high-volume STEM fields still dominated by commercial gold and hybrid titles.
    • Cost exposure. If no diamond venue fits, gold OA via an institutional Read & Publish deal (where one still exists) or the Rights Retention Strategy — depositing the author accepted manuscript under a CC BY licence regardless of the publisher’s OA status — remains a compliant fallback.
    • Journal vetting. Confirm DOAJ listing and peer-review standards before submitting to any unfamiliar diamond title; volume and prestige metrics vary far more widely across diamond journals than across established gold titles.

    Institutions and research administrators should treat this as a policy-tracking task, not a one-off decision: funder OA policies, APC caps, and diamond eligibility lists are being updated through the 2026-2027 phase of the cOAlition S strategy, and guidance that was compliant in 2024 may no longer be by the time a manuscript is accepted.

    What are the practical requirements and deadlines?

    The clearest hard deadline already passed: 31 December 2024 was the cut-off after which cOAlition S funders stopped paying into transformative agreements and transformative journal arrangements. Any Read & Publish deal negotiated after that date does not carry cOAlition S financial backing, though individual funders retain discretion over their own compliance rules.

    There is no equivalent single deadline forcing authors into diamond OA — the 2026-2030 strategy is a funding-and-infrastructure redirection, not a new mandate with a compliance date. Authors should check their funder’s current policy page rather than assume coalition-wide rules apply uniformly, since cOAlition S members retain latitude in implementation.

    Common author questions, answered

    What is the difference between gold and diamond open access?

    Gold open access makes the published article free to read immediately, usually funded by an author-facing APC. Diamond open access also gives immediate free reading but charges neither author nor reader, with costs instead covered by institutions, societies, or public funders.

    What does diamond open access mean?

    Diamond open access means a journal or platform publishes research with no fee to the author and no fee to the reader. It is typically community-led and non-profit, run by academic societies, universities, or consortia rather than commercial publishers, and is sometimes called “platinum” open access.

    What is golden open access?

    “Golden” open access is simply another name for gold open access — the model where the final, published version of an article is made freely readable on the publisher’s own platform immediately, most commonly funded through an article processing charge paid by the author or their institution.

    What is the difference between open access and gold open access?

    “Open access” is the umbrella term covering any route to free-to-read research, including green (repository self-archiving), gold, diamond, and hybrid models. Gold open access is one specific route within that umbrella: publication directly on the journal’s own platform, typically APC-funded.

    What this means for research administrators and institutions

    Institutional OA teams should expect three practical consequences: fewer new Read & Publish deals carrying funder co-financing, more DOAJ-listed diamond venues to vet for approved-journal lists, and a continued need to track funder-by-funder policy pages rather than treat cOAlition S guidance as one uniform rulebook.

    The direction of travel is clear even without a single deadline: cOAlition S investment is moving toward diamond and away from APC-financed transformative deals, while gold OA keeps growing in absolute volume via direct APC payment and Rights Retention. Authors who map their funder’s current policy — not the 2018 Plan S baseline — against real venue options in their field make the more durable choice.

    Research administration teams coordinating institutional OA compliance can find related definitions and workflow context in CASRAI’s research administration resources and the CASRAI Dictionary.

  • cOAlition S Funding 2026: Diamond OA Shift

    cOAlition S funding has shifted decisively since 31 December 2024, when the funder consortium ended financial support for transformative agreements and transformative journals. Its 2026–2030 strategy, overseen by newly appointed Director Curt Rice and new Host Secretariat OPERAS, now channels funder money toward diamond open access publishing, repository infrastructure, and community-led scholarly communication rather than publisher-negotiated read-and-publish deals.

    cOAlition S is an international consortium of research funding and performing organisations — including UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the European Commission, and the Wellcome Trust — that jointly implements Plan S, the 2018 commitment requiring immediate open access to publicly funded research.

    What Is cOAlition S and Why Does Its Funding Matter?

    cOAlition S was formed in September 2018 by a group of national and international research funders to accelerate the transition to full and immediate open access. Its members set grant conditions that publicly funded research must appear in compliant open-access journals, platforms, or repositories without embargo.

    Because member funders collectively control billions in annual research budgets, where cOAlition S chooses to direct compliance-related funding acts as a market signal for the entire scholarly publishing sector — publishers, repositories, and diamond OA platforms all reposition around it.

    Why Did cOAlition S Stop Funding Transformative Agreements?

    Transformative agreements — bundled contracts that shifted library subscription spending toward publisher open-access fees — were originally accepted by cOAlition S as a temporary bridge toward full open access. That bridge has now been formally withdrawn.

    From 31 December 2024, cOAlition S no longer financially supports transformative agreements or transformative journals. Funders instead direct their efforts to innovative, community-led open-access publishing initiatives such as the diamond model of OA, according to cOAlition S’s own implementation guidance, as reflected in university open-access policy guides including the University of Derby Library’s Plan S guidance.

    • Transformative agreements were judged to prolong hybrid open access rather than complete the transition to full OA.
    • cOAlition S’s 10 Principles, in effect since 2021, require CC BY licensing and repository-based immediate access as compliance routes that do not depend on publisher subscription bundles.
    • Funders retain rights-retention strategies and the Journal Checker Tool as the primary compliance mechanisms once transformative-agreement subsidy ends.

    Where Is cOAlition S Redirecting Its Funding in 2026?

    cOAlition S’s 2026–2030 strategy — adopted alongside the appointment of Curt Rice as Director and OPERAS as the coalition’s new Host Secretariat — reorients funder effort toward digital publishing infrastructure and community-owned models rather than publisher-negotiated deals.

    Two developments anchor this redirection. First, the Bengaluru Roadmap and Action Plan on Diamond Open Access, the outcome document of the 3rd Global Summit on Diamond Open Access held in Bengaluru, India, sets out coordinated funder and infrastructure commitments to diamond OA at global scale. Second, cOAlition S’s own Plan S Annual Review 2025 documents the consortium’s compliance monitoring and priority-action progress as it winds down transformative-agreement support.

    Funding mechanism cOAlition S status Effective date
    Transformative agreements / transformative journals Financial support ended 31 December 2024
    Diamond open access journals and platforms Priority investment area 2026–2030 strategy
    Institutional and subject repositories Core compliance route (immediate deposit, no embargo) Ongoing since 2021
    Rights retention / CC BY licensing Required compliance mechanism Ongoing since 2021

    What Role Do Diamond Open Access and Repositories Play?

    Diamond open access is a publishing model in which neither authors nor readers pay fees, with costs instead covered by funders, institutions, or consortia — distinguishing it from the article-processing-charge model that underpins most transformative agreements.

    Repositories remain the other pillar of cOAlition S’s redirected funding: Plan S has, since 2021, treated immediate deposit in open-access repositories as a fully compliant route in its own right, independent of any publisher agreement. As transformative-agreement subsidy disappears, funders are directing new investment toward the shared infrastructure — hosting, discovery, preservation — that diamond OA platforms and repositories both depend on.

    Answer-First Questions on cOAlition S Funding

    What is Plan S?

    Plan S is an open-access publishing mandate launched in September 2018 by cOAlition S, requiring that publications from publicly funded research be published immediately in compliant open-access journals, platforms, or repositories. It has applied to funded research outputs since 1 January 2021.

    Who are the cOAlition S funders?

    cOAlition S funders are an international consortium of national and supranational research funding and performing organisations, including UKRI, the European Commission, and the Wellcome Trust. Membership is open to funders willing to adopt the coalition’s ten Plan S principles and reporting requirements.

    What is diamond open access?

    Diamond open access is a scholarly publishing model where neither authors nor readers pay to publish or read, with operating costs met instead by funders, universities, or library consortia. cOAlition S now names diamond OA a priority destination for redirected funding.

    Why did cOAlition S stop funding transformative agreements?

    cOAlition S judged that transformative agreements risked entrenching hybrid open access rather than completing the shift to full OA. Support ended on 31 December 2024, with funding redirected to community-led, non-APC publishing models instead.

    What Does This Mean for Institutions and Publishers?

    Research offices and libraries that built compliance workflows around transformative-agreement read-and-publish deals now need parallel routes: repository deposit tracking, rights-retention templates, and diamond OA discovery for their researchers’ target venues.

    Publishers reliant on transformative-agreement revenue face a shrinking subsidy pool and should expect continued funder pressure toward CC BY licensing and embargo-free repository deposit as the default compliance path. Institutional research-administration teams should treat this as a funder-policy planning item, not a publishing-office footnote, when reviewing grant terms and reporting obligations. Understanding these shifts in context sits alongside broader research administration practice, and definitions of related terms are collected in the CASRAI research administration dictionary.

    Looking ahead, the 2026–2030 strategy signals that cOAlition S funding decisions will increasingly be judged on infrastructure outcomes — repository capacity, diamond OA sustainability, and equitable access — rather than publisher-agreement coverage, a shift research offices should build into multi-year OA budget planning now rather than after the next Plan S annual review.

  • Plan S Principles in 2026: Mandatory vs Relaxed

    Plan S principles remain fully in force in 2026: none of the original ten clauses has been formally withdrawn. What has changed is enforcement — the temporary carve-out for hybrid “transformative agreements” expired after 2024, and cOAlition S’s November 2025 Strategy for 2026-2030 now commits to rewriting the principles document itself for the first time since 2019.

    Plan S is the funder-driven open access mandate launched by cOAlition S on 4 September 2018, requiring that scholarly publications arising from participating funders’ grants be published immediately, without embargo, in compliant open access journals, platforms or repositories. This article works through each of the ten original principles in turn and states, clause by clause, what is still mandatory, what has been reinterpreted, and what has actually lapsed.

    What Are the Ten Original Principles of Plan S?

    cOAlition S describes Plan S as “one target and 10 principles.” The target is the immediate, embargo-free open access requirement; the ten principles, published in the 2019 Plan S Principles and Implementation guidance, set out how that target is delivered and governed.

    • Authors or their institutions retain copyright, under an open licence — preferably CC BY — consistent with the Berlin Declaration.
    • Funders develop robust criteria and requirements for compliant open access journals, platforms and repositories.
    • Funders coordinate to establish and support compliant venues and infrastructure where none yet exist.
    • Open access publication fees are covered by funders or institutions, never by individual researchers.
    • Funders support a diversity of business models, with fees kept transparent, proportionate and capped where applied.
    • Funders encourage governments, universities, libraries, academies and learned societies to align their own policies.
    • Monographs and book chapters follow a longer, separately negotiated timeline.
    • Funders do not support the “hybrid” subscription-plus-OA model, except transitionally through time-limited transformative arrangements.
    • Funders monitor compliance and sanction non-compliant grantees.
    • Funding and assessment decisions value the intrinsic merit of research outputs, not the journal, its impact factor, or the publisher.

    Which Plan S Principles Are Still Mandatory in 2026?

    Seven of the ten principles are unchanged and enforced exactly as written in 2019. Copyright retention, the requirement that funders (not authors) pay compliant fees, compliance monitoring and sanctions, and merit-based assessment of outputs rather than journal metrics all remain live obligations for cOAlition S’s 28 member funders — up from the twelve founding organisations in 2018, and now spanning agencies in Europe, North America, Jordan, Zambia, South Africa and Australia, per cOAlition S’s own Strategy 2026-2030 document.

    The Journal Checker Tool still operationalises the “robust criteria for compliant venues” principle for every submission, and the longer, separate timeline conceded for monographs and book chapters in 2019 remains unresolved and unchanged in 2026 — cOAlition S has not published a revised monographs timetable.

    Which Principles Have Been Relaxed, Tightened or Left Unresolved?

    No principle has been deleted outright. Two have shifted, and in the opposite direction to what is commonly assumed: the anti-hybrid clause has tightened, not loosened, and the fee-diversity clause has been reinterpreted toward non-APC models rather than relaxed.

    Principle 2019 wording (summary) 2026 status
    Copyright & CC BY Authors retain copyright; CC BY preferred Mandatory, unchanged
    Robust venue criteria Funders set criteria for compliant OA venues Mandatory; enforced via Journal Checker Tool
    Infrastructure support Funders coordinate to build missing OA venues Mandatory, strengthened (Strategic Priority 2)
    Funder-paid fees Fees paid by funders/institutions, not researchers Mandatory, unchanged
    Fee diversity & transparency Diverse business models; transparent, capped fees Reinterpreted toward diamond OA and PRC models
    Policy alignment Funders encourage institutional alignment Mandatory, unchanged
    Monographs timeline Longer, separate process for books Unresolved; no 2026 update published
    No hybrid model Hybrid banned, except transitional arrangements Tightened: transitional carve-out expired after 2024
    Monitoring & sanctions Funders monitor and sanction non-compliance Mandatory, unchanged
    Merit-based assessment Assess outputs, not journal metrics Mandatory, strengthened via assessment-reform links

    The “no hybrid model” principle is the clearest case of change, and it runs counter to a common misreading. cOAlition S confirmed on 26 January 2023 that financial support for open access publishing under transformative arrangements — the negotiated pathway that let hybrid journals count as compliant during a transition period — would end after 2024, with Transformative Journal support ceasing on the same date and no new applications accepted. That decision followed 2023 compliance reviews showing roughly two-thirds of registered Transformative Journals were not meeting their agreed open access growth trajectories. This closure predates and is separate from the newer 2026-2030 strategy; it is not a relaxation but the expiry of a deliberately time-limited exception, which makes the underlying anti-hybrid principle stricter in practice from 2025 onward.

    The fee-diversity principle has not been dropped either. Instead, the cOAlition S Strategy for 2026-2030, published 12 November 2025, commits under Strategic Priority 1 to “review and update the Plan S principles and implementation guides, including enhancing the focus on sustainable and equitable models, such as PRC, diamond open access and preprints.” Diamond open access refers to publishing venues that charge neither authors nor readers; PRC (“Publish, Review, Curate”) describes models — pioneered by platforms such as eLife — where papers are posted openly before formal peer review, then reviewed and curated in the open. Neither model existed at meaningful scale when the original fee-transparency principle was drafted in 2019.

    Answer-First Q&A on Plan S in 2026

    What are the 10 principles of Plan S?

    The ten principles cover copyright retention with CC BY licensing, funder-set venue criteria, infrastructure support, funder-paid fees, diverse and transparent fee models, policy alignment across institutions, a separate monographs timeline, a ban on hybrid publishing (except time-limited transitional arrangements), compliance monitoring with sanctions, and merit-based research assessment.

    Is Plan S still in effect in 2026?

    Yes. Plan S remains active and binding for cOAlition S’s 28 member funders, and the coalition’s Strategy 2026-2030, published November 2025, reaffirms the objective of full and immediate open access while committing to update — not abandon — the underlying principles document.

    What happened to Plan S’s transformative agreements?

    cOAlition S ended financial support for open access publishing under transformative arrangements, including Transformative Journals, after 2024, following a 26 January 2023 announcement. The transitional exception that let some hybrid venues count as compliant has therefore expired, tightening enforcement of the original anti-hybrid principle.

    What is diamond open access under Plan S?

    Diamond open access describes journals and platforms that charge no fees to either authors or readers. cOAlition S’s 2026-2030 strategy names diamond OA, alongside PRC models and preprints, as a priority area for its updated principles and implementation guidance.

    Implications and Outlook for Institutions and Publishers

    For research administration teams, the practical compliance checklist is largely stable: continue verifying venues through the Journal Checker Tool, ensure CC BY licensing and funder-paid fees are documented, and treat any residual “transformative agreement” listing as expired rather than compliant. Publishers still running hybrid titles without a diamond OA or PRC pathway face reduced routes to Plan S compliance now that the transitional carve-out has closed.

    The material open question for 2026-2027 is not whether Plan S survives, but how its updated principles document — due under Strategic Priority 1 of the 2026-2030 strategy — redefines “diverse business models” once diamond OA and PRC are formally written in. cOAlition S has structured its strategy in two phases, an initial 2026-2027 period followed by 2028-2030 priorities subject to Leaders Group review, so institutions should expect incremental guidance updates rather than a single rewrite. An independent study commissioned by cOAlition S, Galvanising the Open Access Community: A Study on the Impact of Plan S (Zenodo, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.13738479), credits the coalition with raising the profile of open access and bringing publishers to the negotiating table — the same leverage it is now applying to push the next generation of non-APC models.

  • Has cOAlition S Retreated From Plan S Rules?

    cOAlition S has not abandoned the goal of full and immediate open access, but its 2026-2030 strategy drops the enforcement mechanism that made Plan S distinctive: financial support for transformative agreements ended after 2024, replaced by a looser, consultation-led push toward diamond open access and preprints. Science.org’s reporting calls this a retreat from strict requirements; cOAlition S calls it a “recalibration” of the same founding mission. Both are partly right, and research administrators deciding how much weight to put on the new targets need to understand exactly what changed.

    Plan S is the funder mandate, launched in September 2018 by cOAlition S, requiring that publications from publicly funded research be made immediately available under an open licence, without embargo, from 2021 onward. cOAlition S is the consortium of national and philanthropic research funders — including UKRI and the Wellcome Trust — that created and enforces that mandate.

    What Does the 2026-2030 Strategy Actually Change?

    The cOAlition S Strategy 2026-2030, adopted by the coalition’s Leaders Group in November 2025, keeps the founding commitment to full and immediate open access but widens the toolkit for getting there. Where the original Plan S centred on a single lever — funder mandates tied to compliance checks — the new strategy explicitly states that “no single model can meet all needs” and extends its focus “beyond mandates and funding conditions.”

    Three priorities anchor the plan: strengthening the foundations for sustainable and equitable open access (including an update to the Plan S principles to foreground Publish-Review-Curate models, diamond open access and preprints); supporting open digital infrastructures, including work on artificial intelligence’s implications for scholarly publishing; and exploring financially sustainable, non-APC publishing systems. Implementation runs in two phases — foundational work in 2026-2027, followed by a deeper equity and sustainability push in 2028-2030, subject to Leaders Group review.

    Why Does Science.org Call This a Retreat?

    Science.org’s analysis, headlined “After Coalition S disrupted scientific publishing, new plan retreats from strict requirements,” argues the new strategy has no teeth. Its central claim: cOAlition S is trading enforceable compliance rules for a broader, softer vision that favours alternatives to paywalled journals without committing to actually replace them.

    The magazine credits the original Plan S with helping push the global share of newly published papers appearing as open access above 50% within a few years of the 2021 mandate taking effect. But it also revisits a well-documented side effect: Plan S’s compliance route pushed many publishers toward author-pays gold and hybrid open access, and some prestigious journals now charge authors thousands of dollars per article while continuing to publish paywalled content elsewhere in the same title. A commentary from Science’s news desk on social media put the critique concisely: the latest strategy “emphasizes consultation, but lacks spending pledges.”

    • No new mandate deadlines are attached to the 2026-2030 priorities.
    • No enforcement or compliance-checking mechanism replaces the one built around transformative agreements.
    • Financial commitments are framed as exploratory (“investigate,” “monitor”) rather than binding.

    How Does cOAlition S Defend the New Strategy?

    cOAlition S rejects the framing of “retreat” outright. Its own communications describe the strategy as reinforcing, not loosening, its open access commitment, under a refreshed vision of “a scholarly communication system that enables rapid, open, transparent, and equitable sharing of trustworthy scientific knowledge.”

    The coalition points to concrete institution-building as evidence of continuity rather than disengagement: it appointed Curt Rice — former rector of Oslo Metropolitan University and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, and former Executive Director of Fulbright Norway — as its first standing Director, announced 13 May 2026, specifically to lead delivery of the 2026-2030 strategy. It has also named OPERAS, the European research infrastructure for open scholarly communication, as its new Host Secretariat, and it co-produced the Bengaluru Roadmap and Action Plan on Diamond Open Access at the 3rd Global Summit on Diamond Open Access. None of that reads as an organisation stepping back — it reads as one restructuring around a different theory of change: build sustainable, non-commercial infrastructure rather than police compliance.

    What Happens to Transformative Agreements?

    Transformative agreements — the “read and publish” deals between institutions and publishers designed to convert subscription spend into open access output — are the clearest casualty of the shift. cOAlition S confirmed the end of its financial support for open access publishing under transformative arrangements after 2024, having already stopped accepting new applications to the programme after 30 June 2023.

    In their place, the 2026-2030 strategy channels investment toward diamond open access — journals and platforms that charge neither authors nor readers — and toward preprint infrastructure. Diamond open access is a publishing model funded through institutional, library-consortium or public grants rather than per-article charges, positioned by cOAlition S as the more equitable long-term alternative to both subscription paywalls and high-cost APCs.

    Mechanism Status under Plan S (2018-2024) Status under 2026-2030 strategy
    Transformative agreements Funded as a transitional route to compliance Funding ended after 2024; no new applications since June 2023
    Diamond open access Encouraged, not prioritised Named strategic priority, backed by the Bengaluru Roadmap
    Compliance mandate Immediate OA required from 2021, checked via the Journal Checker Tool Principles retained, but no new binding deadlines set
    Governance Coordinated informally among funders Standing Director (Curt Rice) and OPERAS-hosted Secretariat

    Answer-First Questions on Plan S and cOAlition S

    What Is Plan S?

    Plan S is a funder-led initiative, launched in September 2018, requiring that publications resulting from publicly funded research be published in open-access journals, on open-access platforms, or deposited in open repositories immediately, without embargo. It is supported by cOAlition S, an international consortium of national and philanthropic research funders.

    What Is the Main Principle of Plan S?

    The core principle is that, from 2021, all scholarly publications funded by public or private grants from participating funders must be made immediately available in open access, without embargo, under an open licence — typically CC BY. That mandate remains unchanged in the 2026-2030 strategy; what has changed is how compliance is supported.

    Is Open Access Always Free for Everyone?

    No. Open access guarantees free reading access, not free publishing. Under the author-pays model that expanded alongside Plan S compliance, many journals shifted costs onto authors through article processing charges, which critics — including Science.org — argue created a new equity problem the 2026-2030 strategy now explicitly tries to address through diamond open access.

    What Does This Mean for Institutions and Publishers?

    For research administrators and institutional leaders, the practical takeaway is that Plan S’s headline compliance requirement has not disappeared — the Journal Checker Tool still governs how researchers assess eligible venues — but the financial pressure that pushed publishers into transformative agreements has been withdrawn. Institutions currently relying on transformative deals negotiated with cOAlition S funding in mind should not assume renewal on the same terms.

    Publishers, meanwhile, face a genuine strategic fork: continue investing in APC-based hybrid and gold open access, where cOAlition S funding is no longer available, or build toward diamond and Publish-Review-Curate models that better match the coalition’s stated 2028-2030 priorities. Institutions tracking funder mandates and compliance timelines through their research administration functions will find this shift material to budget planning, not just messaging.

    Neither “retreat” nor “recalibration” fully settles the argument. Science.org is correct that the new strategy carries no new enforcement mechanism and no fresh spending pledge. cOAlition S is correct that its founding mandate — immediate, unembargoed open access — has not been withdrawn on paper. The honest reading sits between the two: cOAlition S has traded a narrower, harder lever for a broader, softer one, betting that infrastructure and diamond open access will do the work that compliance deadlines used to do. Whether that bet pays off will be visible well before 2030, in whether diamond open access funding actually scales and whether APC inflation slows without a mandate forcing the issue.

  • Read and Publish Agreements: UK Compliance Guide

    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?

    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.