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Transformative Agreements - FAQs
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Transformative Agreements - FAQs

A transformative agreement is the combined provision of two services for one cost: OA publishing and reading access to all subscription journals.

What is a transformative agreement and what will it provide my institution?

A transformative agreement is the combined provision of two services for one cost: OA publishing and reading access to all subscription journals:

Reading provision

Online-only access to the CUP full journals package
Perpetual access to all journal volumes published within the agreement term
Shallow back-file access in line with individual journal terms, for the duration of the agreement term
Any subscription journals added to the package will be included at no extra charge

Open Access publishing provision

Uncapped or capped no-cost OA publishing in all hybrid and gold OA journals within the CUP full journals package

What support does CUP provide to participants in a transformative agreement?

CUP is committed to helping authors and librarians maximize the impact of a transformative agreement at a local level via the following evolving set of resources:

Dedicated email inbox – [email protected]

An email support service for authors and librarians to assist with any practical questions relating to a transformative agreement. We strongly encourage the use of this resource.

Resources for Librarians

An onboarding webinar for your library
A dedicated agreement page to help broadcast awareness to authors
Quarterly article reporting, showing all articles published OA and non-OA
Additional materials to make the most of your Transformative agreement
Automatic retroactive OA outreach for any eligible articles that do not publish OA

Resources for Authors

Your institution will be loaded into our Waivers and Discounts tool, which enables authors to check eligibility to publish OA at no additional cost and browse included journals
Guidance on publishing OA in the Cambridge workflow

Is participating in a transformative agreement more work for the library?

We find that transformative agreements are most successful when a library is actively and successfully raising awareness of the OA publishing opportunities available. However, the institution is not solely responsible for any element of the promotion, or day-to-day management of the agreement. Your time will be needed to help set up the agreement, via completing some short pieces of information, and enabling a particular setting in our third-party system. However, once up and running, a transformative agreement can be entirely self-sufficient.

Several support points are available, detailed further, above (see what support does CUP provide to institutions participating in transformative agreements?)

How is my transformative agreement price calculated?

We determine your 2024 transformative agreement cost in three ways, depending on whether you are already a 2023 CUP full package subscriber or a title-by-title subscriber, or will be a brand-new Cambridge journals customer in 2024.

For those institutions previously subscribing title-by-title, the cost is comprised of the following:

The 2024 online-only value of 2023 title-by-title subscriptions, excluding leaver journals
The value of gained titles from the 2024 full journals package, heavily discounted
An average annual value of historic APCs identified as previously paid for by the institution.

For institutions previously subscribing to the CUP full journals package:

An annual increase from your 2023 price paid
An average value of historic APCs identified as previously paid for by the institution.

For institutions who have not subscribed to Cambridge journals previously:

A pricing matrix calculates your 2024 cost, looking at two key pieces of information:
- The 2021 Carnegie Basic Classification of your institution
- The annual average research output in Cambridge University Press journals

Is there a deadline to decide on participating?

To guarantee a live agreement from 1st January 2024, the deadline for returning your onboarding questionnaire (see My institution would like to join a transformative agreement, what next?) to us is 1st December 2023. It is possible to elect to join the agreement after this, however the live date for the OA publishing provision may be delayed.

Why is the transformative agreement model so relevant to CUP and why is it important that my institution participates?

At Cambridge, our mission is to ensure any researcher, anywhere, can immediately read and re-use scholarship of the very highest quality. Our transformative agreement model sets us on the path toward achieving this aim in a way which is viable for us, the publisher, and sustainable for you, the institution. The model now has over 2,000 participants worldwide, including almost 400 in North America.

Whether your institution is traditionally research intensive or not, participating in a transformative agreement provides important local value-add, and plays an active role in advancing our mission.

Who and what is eligible for no-cost OA publishing under a transformative agreement?

Articles that comply with the following criteria will be automatically eligible:

Corresponding author affiliated to participating institution
Article accepted for publication in CUP hybrid or gold open access journals within the CUP full journals package
Article accepted for publication within the term of the agreement
Article is one of five research article types, as defined by CUP (research, reviews, rapid communications, brief reports, case reports)

How does Cambridge determine whether an article is eligible to publish OA under a transformative agreement?

When submitting their article, an author is asked to enter affiliation details into a submission system. Once an article is accepted for publication, metadata is fed to our production system, when the article is assigned a GRID ID based on the reported affiliation. This is an important detail in the context of assessing eligibility for OA publishing under a transformative agreement.

If an article has a transformative agreement eligible GRID ID, we assess the article under additional criteria relevant to the agreement (such as acceptance date, article type, in addition to other criteria noted above). If the article is eligible for inclusion under a live agreement the author’s APC will automatically be waived once they select to publish their article OA.

An 'Average Annual Direct APC Spend Carried' is indicated in my pricing and added to my overall spend base. How does CUP determine which APCs were paid by my institution?

We have cross-referenced our article data with information from Dimensions (a Digital Science research database) which allows us to see whether there is a funding body assigned to articles published OA. Articles with a paid APC and a funder associated with them, are assumed to have been published OA with money from outside your institution. As a result, these values are not carried forward to the 2024 cost. Continuing this logic, we assume APCs paid to publish articles OA that do not have a funding affiliation have been covered by the institution. We carry forward the average value of APCs paid 2018-2020 identified in this way.

What does the GRID ID Summary tab on the quote file relate to and why is this important?

We follow the GRID/ROR Database in assigning persistent institutional identifiers to our journals articles. The GRID ID Summary tab on your quotation shows your principal GRID ID, and all the related or child entities associated with it, according to the GRID and ROR database.

As a default, our quotes are inclusive of the listed Child GRID IDs alongside the Principle GRID ID for your institution. All fees, if any, associated with the inclusion of the Child IDs are specified in Cell B10 of the GRID ID Summary tab on your quote sheet. If you do not see a particular part of your institution listed on this summary, this does not mean it will be excluded from the agreement: it simply means that a persistent identifier for this particular entity does not exist in the GRID/ROR Database.

The additional GRID relationships – related, parents, etc – are provided only for your review, so that you can tell us the publishing you intend to cover with your agreement. We know that the relationships between various university entities and institutes can be complicated. Please let your sales representative know if you wish to remove a Child ID, or add another GRID entity, to your agreement.

If you have no revisions to make, there is no need to let us know: should you proceed with a transformative agreement we will set the publishing component to offer APC waivers to all GRID IDs indicated as included in the agreement.

My quote indicates 'capped' under the OA provision field. What does this mean?

For most institutions, the quoted transformative agreement price will be enough to offer an uncapped publishing agreement. But sometimes there is a significant imbalance of spend against publishing output and an uncapped agreement is not possible. We determine whether an agreement can offer uncapped or capped OA by comparing the value of your average publishing output alongside your 2024 transformative agreement. We calculate the value of an institution’s publishing output by assigning a per article value to you – this is an amount discounted from our average APC of $3095, and is tiered according to article output level. The discount range begins at 15% and ends at 30%.

If your total publishing value exceeds your 2024 transformative agreement cost, we are only able to offer a capped publishing provision. This entitles your institution to a specific number of zero-cost OA articles per year. An optional additional fee is available to unlock an uncapped agreement, which is also indicated on your quotation.

Our aim is to offer an uncapped agreement wherever possible: please contact us if you would like to discuss alternatives to the capped agreement we have indicated for your institution.

I have a question about my quotation - who should I contact?

Please contact your usual Cambridge sales representative with any questions – we will be happy to walk you through your quotation or answer any questions you have about participating in a transformative agreement.

My institution would like to join a transformative agreement, what next?

Great news! Thank you for joining us and contributing to the global transition to open access. Please inform your consortium liaison or your Cambridge representative directly. You will then be prompted to complete a short questionnaire, which enables us to set up your publishing provision with our partner, Rightslink.

Important! If you have subscribed to Cambridge journals on a title-by-title basis in 2023, your subscriptions will likely be pending renewal with your subscription agent(s) of choice. Please contact relevant agents as soon as possible to inform them that you intend to move to CUP transformative agreement in 2024, and therefore do not require online subscriptions to journals within the 2024 Cambridge full journals package.