Transformative Agreements and Open Access
This page contains information on the RVC’s transformative agreements and additional information on Open Access.
Wiley OA agreement confirmed for 2024-2025
The Wiley Jisc Read and Publish Open Access 2024-2025 negotiations have concluded. The new RVC account has been set up and articles are now being processed as usual.
New for 2024
For 2024, the RVC has agreements with: Elsevier, Microbiology Society, Portland Press, Royal Society, Wiley, PLOS, Company of Biologists, Cambridge University Press and Bioscientifica.
Information on APC funding for PeerJ journals can be found here
A list of the journals included in the 2024 agreements can be downloaded here (.xlsx file).
These agreements open up gold open access publishing opportunities to all corresponding authors with an RVC address, who are requested to upload their outputs to Worktribe, where they will be discoverable on the repository.
A note on licences
If asked to choose a licence when submitting to a journal covered by a transformative agreement, please choose a CC BY licence if possible. This licence will be suitable for most articles. If your article contains particularly sensitive or restricted information, or other material you think it would be inappropriate to make freely available for reuse; then in this case a more restrictive licence would be the appropriate choice. More information about licences can be found here.
RVC’s Transformative Agreements
This section contains Elsevier, Microbiology Society, Portland Press, Royal Society, Wiley, PLOS, Company of Biologists, Cambridge University Press, Bioscientifica and Other RVC Plans & Open Access Memberships.
Transformative Agreements mean that authors can make their work gold open access through our agreements with publishers, which cover both subscription to the content of journals and the cost associated with gold open access publishing.
The RVC has joined the following Transformative Agreements to facilitate the shift of scholarly research to immediate open access.
Elsevier
Elsevier Read and Publish 2022-2024.
The agreement provides Open Access publishing in Core Hybrid, Cell Press and The Lancet titles and Read Access to existing ScienceDirect and Cell Press Journals.
It also provides a discount on OA publishing in Elsevier's portfolio of fully open access titles.
However, for many Cell Press and Lancet titles this deal does not cover review articles.
The list of titles covered can be found here.
This agreement also gives a 15% discount on APC's related to journals listed here.
Microbiology Society
Microbiology Society Publish & Read Transitional Agreement 2023-2024.
An unlimited Publish and Read transitional agreement covering the full Microbiology Society portfolio of three hybrid and three full OA journals.
This includes the following journals: -
International Journal of Systemic and Evolutionary Microbiology
Journal of General Virology
Journal of Medical Microbiology
Microbiology
Microbial Genomics
Access Microbiology
Where a corresponding author has an RVC email address, the Microbiology Society will ask the author to sign a CC BY Creative Commons licence and will publish their article gold open access.
Details of the 'author journey' have been provided by the Society here.
Portland Press
Portland Press Read and Publish Transitional Agreement 2024-25.
Portland Press Read and Publish Agreement provides Jisc members access to the five-journal package, including all Portland Press hybrid journals and unlimited APC-free, OA publishing in all seven Portland Press journals: five hybrid plus two full-OA journals. New for 2024, Jisc members will have access to the full archive for the duration of the agreement.
These journals are as follows: -
Biochemical Journal
Clinical Science
Biochemical Society Transactions
Essay in Biochemistry
Emerging Topics in Life Sciences
Bioscience Reports
Neuronal Signalling
Royal Society
Royal Society Journals Read and Publish Transitional Agreement 2024.
A Read and Publish transitional agreement for the Royal Society's full journals package of eight hybrid and two open access journals, including unlimited read access and uncapped open access publishing.
This includes the following journals: -
Philosophical Transactions A
Philosophical Transactions B
Proceedings A
Proceedings B
Biology Letters
Interface
Interface Focus
Notes & Records
Open Biology
Open Science
Download the author journey PDF for Open Biology, our fully open access journal dedicated to cell and molecular biology.
Download the author journey PDF for Royal Society Open Science, our fully open access journal covering all of science.
Download the author journey for hybrid journals, Proceedings A, Proceedings B, Biology Letters, Interface and Notes and Records.
Wiley
Wiley OA agreement confirmed for 2024-2025
The Wiley Jisc Read and Publish Open Access 2024-2025 negotiations have concluded. The new RVC account has been set up and articles are now being processed as usual.
Wiley Jisc Read and Publish Open Access 2024-2025.
The Wiley Jisc Read and Publish agreement combines open access publishing and full and permanent access to ~1,635 Wiley journals for the period 2020 to 2023.
Corresponding authors at the RVC can publish gold open access in Vet Record, In Practice, Vet Record Open and Vet Record Case Reports.
A full list of journals included can be found from the download link at the top of this page. Additional information about the journals included in the agreement can be found here.
Use Wiley’s how to guide, selecting a CC BY licence when prompted.
For guidance when submitting articles contact publicationsrepos@rvc.ac.uk
Jisc's white paper 'Monitoring the transition to open access: Jisc-Wiley transitional agreement' is available to read here, supplemented by a blog post.
PLOS
PLOS OA Tiered Flat Fee publishing 2024.
Jisc members pay an annual flat fee (based on historic publishing trend with PLOS from 2016-2020) for unlimited publishing in seven PLOS journals
The journals covered are: -
PLOS Computational Biology
PLOS Pathogens
PLOS Genetics
PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases
PLOS ONE
PLOS Digital Health
PLOS Complex Systems
The Company of Biologists
The Company of Biologists Read and Publish 2022-2024.
An unlimited Read and Publish Transitional Agreement covering the three Company of Biologists' hybrid journals and two open access journals.
These journals are: -
Development
Journal of Cell Science
Journal of Experimental Biology
Biology Open
Disease Models and Mechanisms
Follow this step-by-step guide for advice on the submission process.
As a not-for-profit publisher, The Company of Biologists uses its surplus income for the benefit of biology and the biological community, offering grants that support and encourage the sharing of knowledge throughout the community by facilitating international collaboration, event attendance and the organisation of scientific meetings, conferences and workshops.
Springer
Springer Nature Read and Publish 2023-2025
The Springer Nature Read and Publish 2023-2025 agreement brings together Springer, Palgrave Macmillan, and Nature Research journals into one Read and Publish agreement.
More information can be found here
As with all our agreements, and in line with best practice, articles must be published with a CC BY licence.
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Read and Publish 2024
This is a read and publish transitional OA agreement. This covers CUP complete collection (includes new and take over titles per annum/latest collection).
Animal Welfare is covered by this agreement.
A full publishing list can be found here
Cambridge Prisms and Research Directions added to CUP Read and Publish agreement
The agreement includes unlimited publishing in all journals in these series.
Series titles include Precision Medicine, Biotechnology Design and One Health.
Cambridge Prisms and Research Directions are two new series of OA journals designed to reflect the research process, address real-world challenges, and build connections across disciplines. Both series operate open peer review, have open data mandates and follow open standards. The Research Directions platform hosts chains of collaborative work, with the entire research journey openly available on its community space, through the hosting and linking of early outputs.
Bioscientifica
Read and Publish 2024
This is a read and publish transitional agreement offering unlimited open access publishing for Bioscientifica's four hybrid journals:
Journal of Endocrinology
Journal of Molecular Endocrinology
Endocrine-Related Cancer
Reproduction
Published on behalf of two learned societies: Society for Endocrinology and Society for Reproduction and Fertility.
Other RVC Plans & Open Access Memberships
Peer J
PeerJ funding is available from our institutional plan to pay for Basic Memberships. Memberships last for life and allow you to publish one article per year in PeerJ, as long as all authors on a paper have a Membership. Please claim for your membership on this page when your article has been accepted for publication and complete the email verification: https://peerj.com/institutions/58/the-royal-veterinary-college/.
The FAQ on paid memberships and APCs is helpful.
Please direct any queries relating to these topics to publicationsrepos@rvc.ac.uk
Additional information on Open Access
This section contains, Diamond Open Access, Predatory Journals, Open Research, Tools for Accessing Open Research, Plan S and Rights Retention Strategy.
Diamond Open Access
In addition to utilising transformative agreements, researchers can also publish their work with immediate open access for free in a variety of journals known as 'diamond journals'. These journals are based on scholarly publishing models that are sustained cooperatively and seek to focus on non-profit publishing.
These can be browsed and assessed for suitability on the Directory of Open Access Journals, using the filter 'Without article processing charges (APCs)'. For journals to be listed in DOAJ, they must register and meet particular criteria relating to open access.
This approach is thriving in Latin America in particular. More details can be found via: -
Predatory Journals
To help decide appropriate journals for your work, the site Think. Check. Submit provides a range of useful resources. Predatory journals continue to be a challenge to be mindful of and work is ongoing to develop a Journal Authenticator tool. Some advice for researchers may be found here.
Open Research
Recent events have underscored the need for open science.
Transformative Agreements, transitional agreements and Read and Publish deals are all terms that effectively refer to the same concept. This concept is immediate open access of research. Transformative agreements are contracts negotiated between institutions and publishers. Negotiations are mostly conducted by Jisc. They aim to transform the business model underlying scholarly journal publishing. Moving from one based on toll access (subscription), to one in which publishers are remunerated a fair price for their open access publishing services. These agreements will help to create the necessary preconditions for systemic change in scholarly communication.
To facilitate learning about Open Research, Christopher Eaker developed the Open Research Toolkit, which takes a detailed look at open research concepts and skills. The Toolkit would be useful for anyone interested in learning more about open research. Videos can be found here, with their corresponding slides available to download here.
Tools for Accessing Open Research
Open Access Button (now part of OA Works)
Plan S
Plan S states
“With effect from 2021, all scholarly publications on the results from research funded by public or private grants provided by national, regional and international research councils and funding bodies, must be published in Open Access Journals, on Open Access Platforms, or made immediately available through Open Access Repositories without embargo.”
Transformative Agreements arose in response to Plan S, a policy announced in September 2018 by a group of research funding organisations (cOAlition S), which aims to expedite the transition to full and immediate OA to research publications and challenges publishers to move away from the hybrid (subscription) business model. Plan S seeks to develop a better understanding of the publishing landscape and the options available to researchers to share their research findings immediately and openly. The group behind Plan S, cOAlition S, commissioned an independent report that seeks to contribute to this understanding. They also keep an official blog, the sOApbox, concerning initiatives and opinions relating to the implementation of the plan.
Although many RVC researchers are not funded by cOAlition S organisations, the effects of Plan S will be increasingly discernible because more publishers will offer Transformative Agreements to institutions. These are often more cost effective to sign up to, when compared to paying the costs for gold open access and subscription deals separately. These deals are referred to as transitional agreements because the publishers behind them commit to moving towards publishing only fully open access journals. The initial date for publishers to change their business models by ‘flipping’ to immediate open access only was at the end of 2024. However, cOAlition S have now said that only funding for transformative agreements will end on this date – they have compiled some FAQs.
Their FAQs on rights and licences gives advice on using the Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY).
Rights Retention Strategy
To support academics in retaining their rights, cOAlition S have developed the Rights Retention Strategy (RRS). A webinar on this topic, which gives a useful breakdown of the aims and practicalities of the initiative is given below.
Plan S Rights Retention Strategy - myth busting online event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLEZ78qRFpw
Wellcome funded researchers are now required to include the following wording in the manuscripts they submit to journals, in order to protect their intellectual rights:
“This research was funded in whole or in part by the Wellcome Trust [Grant number]. For the purpose of Open Access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version arising from this submission.”
This can be easily amended for researchers funded by other bodies or for unfunded researchers. By default, copyright resides with the creator. So, if you wish to retain your rights you are able to.
Stephen Eglen, Professor of Computational Neuroscience at Cambridge University provides has developed a Primer on the Rights Retention Strategy. Adopting this language and supporting this initiative will help make more work immediately accessible to all. As this strategy can be used in the eventuality of funds not being available to pay for gold open access. Further background on the development of this policy can also be found in cOAlition S's letter to publishers, signed by many ECR's in response to some of their identified practices.