CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: read and publish 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 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.

  • 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.

  • Transformative Agreements End: Diamond OA Pivot Under cOAlition S 2026–2030 Strategy

    cOAlition S’s 2026–2030 strategy, published 12 November 2025, confirms that transformative agreements no longer sit at the centre of its open access policy: funders will not fund new transformative agreements by default (a position effective since 2025), and the coalition is redirecting policy attention and infrastructure investment toward diamond open access, preprints, and publish-review-curate models. For library consortia and research offices still budgeting around read-and-publish renewals, this is the point at which planning assumptions need to change.

    A transformative agreement is a contract negotiated between a library, national consortium, or regional grouping and a publisher that repurposes former subscription spending into payment for open access publishing services, intended as a temporary bridge from subscription access to a fully open access system rather than a permanent settlement.

    What Changed in cOAlition S’s 2026–2030 Strategy

    cOAlition S confirmed the end of its financial support for open access publishing under transformative arrangements after 31 December 2024, a position it first announced on 26 January 2023 and formalised in the Plan S Implementation Guidance. From 2025, participating funders stopped treating a transformative agreement as automatically compliant with Plan S; authors must instead demonstrate compliance through full open access publication, an independently negotiated agreement meeting transparency criteria, or rights retention.

    The coalition’s Strategy 2026–2030, released 12 November 2025, builds on that withdrawal rather than reversing it. The document sets three strategic priorities: strengthening the foundations of full, immediate, sustainable, and equitable open access (including a review of the Plan S principles to give explicit weight to publish-review-curate models, diamond open access, and preprints); supporting the digital infrastructures that make open access sustainable; and exploring financially sustainable, equitable publishing systems with formal monitoring of policy impact.

    Implementation runs in two phases: an initial two-year period from 2026 to 2027, followed by 2028–2030, with second-phase priorities to be set by the coalition’s Leaders Group based on what the first phase delivers. The coalition itself has grown considerably during this period, from 12 founding organisations at Plan S’s 2018 launch to 28 funders spanning Europe, North America, Jordan, Zambia, South Africa, and Australia.

    Why cOAlition S Is Moving Away From Transformative Agreements

    cOAlition S’s own reasoning is explicit: continuing to fund transformative arrangements indefinitely risked making them permanent, which the coalition has stated would perpetuate the hybrid open access model it has consistently opposed. Individual funders retain discretion to keep supporting transformative agreements as part of national strategies, and any such exceptions are published on the cOAlition S website, but this is now framed as an exception rather than the default route.

    Independent data on open access growth supports the coalition’s case that the market has moved on from where it stood when transformative agreements were designed. According to the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM), the share of articles, reviews, and conference papers published immediately as gold open access rose from 14% in 2014 to 40% in 2024, while the subscription-only share fell from 70% to 54% over the same decade. Gold open access, funded through article processing charges, is now the dominant open route — which is precisely the outcome the coalition says has intensified concerns about cost and equity, and pushed diamond open access up its agenda.

    Lidia Borrell-Damián, chair of the cOAlition S executive steering group and Secretary General of Science Europe, has summarised the shift directly: “We are trying to shift the market towards more diverse, sustainable approaches.” Not every commentator reads the pivot the same way. Richard Sever, assistant director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press and a co-founder of the preprint server bioRxiv, has argued that Plan S has gone from being “fairly specific” — originally focused on flipping subscription journals through transformative agreements — to “rather vague,” now spanning preprints, alternative peer review, and diamond open access simultaneously.

    Open access route Who typically pays cOAlition S funder support, 2026–2030
    Transformative agreement (read & publish) Library or consortium, bundled with subscription Not funded as a default compliance route since 2025; national exceptions only
    Gold open access (APC) Author, institution, or funder, per article Recognised route; cost and equity impacts now formally monitored
    Rights retention (green OA + CC BY manuscript) No publishing fee; repository deposit Default compliance mechanism where no other route applies
    Diamond/platinum open access Universities, societies, funders, consortia infrastructure Named strategic priority; principles review and infrastructure investment
    Publish-review-curate (PRC) / preprints Funder or community infrastructure Included in the 2026–2027 principles review

    What Library Consortia and Research Offices Need to Renegotiate

    Consortia that built multi-year budgets around transformative agreement renewals now need to treat those renewals as contestable rather than routine. The practical work falls into a small number of categories.

    • Audit existing transformative agreements against cOAlition S’s current compliance rules, and flag which corresponding authors and grants are affected by the loss of default recognition.
    • Reopen consortium-level negotiations with publishers whose transformative agreements are approaching renewal, testing whether an independently negotiated, transparent read-and-publish deal or a conversion to full open access better serves the portfolio.
    • Reallocate a share of subscription and APC budgets toward diamond open access infrastructure — journal platforms, society publishing services, and consortium-run funds — in line with cOAlition S’s stated 2026–2027 priority of supporting digital publishing infrastructure.
    • Strengthen rights retention workflows so that manuscript deposit with a CC BY licence happens at submission, since this remains the fallback compliance route wherever a transformative agreement no longer applies.
    • Track the ESAC Initiative’s transformative agreement registry and national consortium reporting to benchmark negotiating positions against comparable institutions rather than negotiating in isolation.

    Institutions with mature identifier and metadata infrastructure — ORCID, DataCite, and CrossRef records consistently linked to funder awards — are better placed to demonstrate compliance under this more fragmented set of routes than institutions still relying on a publisher-reported transformative agreement dashboard.

    Answer-First Q&A: Transformative Agreements and Diamond Open Access

    What is a transformative agreement?

    A transformative agreement is an umbrella term, defined by the ESAC Initiative, for contracts negotiated between institutions and publishers that repurpose former subscription expenditure to remunerate publishers for open access publishing services, gradually shifting the underlying business model from toll access toward open access.

    What is a transformative journal?

    A transformative journal is a subscription or hybrid journal that commits to a defined trajectory toward full open access, including a rising share of open access content and offsetting subscription income against publishing fees. cOAlition S also withdrew financial recognition of this route after 2024.

    What is diamond open access?

    Diamond (or platinum) open access describes journals and platforms that charge no fee to either authors or readers, with publishing costs instead covered by universities, scholarly societies, funders, or library consortia. It is a named strategic priority in cOAlition S’s 2026–2030 strategy.

    Is a transformative agreement still Plan S compliant?

    A transformative agreement can still satisfy Plan S if it is published on an individual funder’s list of recognised exceptions for national strategies; otherwise, cOAlition S no longer treats it as automatically compliant, and authors must use full open access, an approved independent agreement, or rights retention instead.

    Implications and What Comes Next

    The near-term implication is budgetary and administrative: consortia negotiating transformative agreement renewals in 2026 and 2027 should expect publishers to resist unwinding these deals, since they remain commercially attractive, even as funder recognition narrows. The medium-term implication is structural: cOAlition S’s own strategy explicitly ties future funding priorities to diamond open access and shared infrastructure, meaning consortium budgets that continue flowing entirely through subscription-linked read-and-publish deals will increasingly diverge from where funder policy is heading.

    The second phase of the strategy, from 2028 to 2030, is not yet fixed; cOAlition S’s Leaders Group will set those priorities based on what the 2026–2027 principles review and infrastructure investments actually deliver. Institutions that use the next two years to build diamond open access contributions, tighten rights-retention deposit workflows, and maintain clean, linked identifier metadata will be negotiating from a position of readiness rather than catching up once the second phase is confirmed.

    See the CASRAI Dictionary for definitions of related open access and compliance terms, and the CASRAI research administration hub for broader compliance and infrastructure guidance.