Chris Banks, Imperial College London, Caren Milloy, Jisc, Transitional agreements were developed in response to funder policy and institutional demand to constrain costs and facilitate funder compliance. They have since become the dominant model by which UK research outputs are made open access. In January 2023, Jisc instigated a critical review of TAs and the OA landscape to provide an evidence base to inform a conversation on the desired future state of research dissemination. This session will discuss the key findings of the review and its impact on a sector-wide consultation and concrete actions in the UK and beyond.

1. Are we there yet?
A review of UK transitional agreements
Caren Milloy, Jisc
Chris Banks, Imperial College London

2. About the review
The review responds to the following questions:
1. What proportion of scholarly literature is open access?
2. What impact have TAs had on open access to global and UK research
publications?
3. What effect have TAs had on costs for UK institutions?
4. How far have TAs facilitated author compliance with funder and the
sector’s requirements?
5. Do TAs deliver on their promise of being temporary and transitional?
2

3. Transitional Agreements have served a purpose
93%
Of UKRI-funded
articles have a
compliant route
available to them – of
these, 63% are
compliant through
inclusion in a Jisc-
negotiated TA.
3
92%
Of TAs (35) include
workflows where a
Creative Commons
CC-BY licence is
presented as the
default licence to
authors.
+4%
Higher number of UK
Open articles compared
with number of global
Open articles.
Removing friction and achieving high levels of compliant OA
+30%
UK saw a 30% increase
in overall proportion of
Open articles and a 25%
decrease of Closed
between 2014 and 2022
compared to 25%/ 20%
globally

4. Jisc negotiated transitional agreements delivered actual cost savings of
£16.7m in their first year and cost avoidance of £42m to subscribing
institutions in 2022
Constraining costs for research institutions

5. Globally, closed articles still account for 41%
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5
• The total volume of research articles
continues to grow
• Closed articles as a proportion have
reduced from 58% in 2014 to 41% in
2022
• The rate of increase of Gold articles has
stagnated between 2020 and 2022
• Hybrid articles started increasing from
2020 after maintaining a static
proportion of 3-4% of global articles
between 2014 and 2019
• There has been a decline in Green
Figure 5: the year-on-year change in the proportion of all articles published globally from publishers with 2022 UK TAs by OA status
(defined by Unpaywall), from 2014 to 2022. Data source: Dimensions and Unpaywall

6. Unintended consequences: Hybrid eating
Green
The UK’s proportion of Hybrid articles is more
than double the proportion in the rest of the
world (UK: 21%; global: 10%).
Proportion of Hybrid articles in titles within Jisc
TAs rose 19% between 2018 and 2022
There has been a steady decline in the
number of UK green-only articles - around 4%
over each of the last four years - a more
exaggerated version of the global trend
Around 40% of research by UK corresponding
authors has remained behind a paywall for the
last five years
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6

7. Looking within Jisc TAs
-2%
Overall proportion of
closed content declined
by 2% across the 38
publishers during the
review period and open
content increased by
7%
7
61%
Proportion of closed
content remains
above 50% in 2022
for 27 publishers, with
the average at 61%
33%
On average Open
content accounted for
33% of the content in
TA titles in 2022. 29
publishers maintained
or increased the
proportion of Open
articles
The Jisc TA’s reflect the global trends, with increases in open
content but closed remaining significant
20/38
Publishers maintained
or increased the
proportion of closed
content since before
the Jisc TA

8. The flip rate is slow
We observed low rates of journals being ‘flipped’ to fully OA
between 2018 and 2022.
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8
Figure 10: estimates of proportion and number of journals in TAs that are likely to have flipped to
fully Gold and estimated year of flip. Data source: Delta Think
Only three publishers flipped more
than 10% of the journals included in
Jisc TA title lists
Of the ‘big five’ publishers, Wiley
flipped the greatest proportion of
their Jisc TA titles in the five years
(7%)
Based on the journal flipping rates
observed between 2018-2022, it
would take at least 70 years for the
big five publishers to flip their TA
titles to OA.

9. The reach of UK
transitional agreements
9
• TAs at a UK level have yet to make an
impact beyond UK HE and those institutions
able to subscribe
• Excluded groups include researchers in
health and social care settings, corporate
research and development and researchers
at non subscribing institutions
• There is a significant gap between the
number of articles with a corresponding
author at a Jisc member institution and
those published under a TA – a difference of
21,894 articles

10. Transitional agreements have achieved a lot but clear
that we are approaching their limits
Pace, Financial Sustainability, Equity
Confidence is low
Pace is not acceptable nor
affordable
Transparent and evidenced
roadmaps are needed
10
An article growth economy is
not sustainable
TA’s / alternatives need to
bridge the gap and drive
equity, diversity and
inclusion
Enabling divestment to
support the future of
research dissemination is
essential

11. Where is
“there”?
Unintended
consequences
Chris Banks :: UKSG :: 9 April 2024

12. £264,725,379.38
= funds UKRI has allocated to OA for
journal articles 2012 – 2023/24

13. Imperial College London
Finch report and the preference for “gold”
09/04/2024
13
Was it a big expensive experiment?
To what extent was this preference unduly influenced by the publishers?
To what extent has publisher activity since Finch been focussed more on securing a
proportion of the additional funding made available to support gold rather than effecting a
meaningful transition?
Given the commercial nature of publishing, to what extent is the UK preference for gold
sustainable? Other countries have not gone down the “Finch” preference for gold/funded route?

14. Imperial College London
Research and publishing
A dichotomy
On the one hand:
• Research is a collaborative endeavour
• HE researchers collaborate with researchers in
other sectors, including health and charity
sectors
• Many HE researchers hold dual HE/NHS clinical
contracts
BUT
• Publishers sell into those sectors separately –
there is market segmentation
• Charities and the NHS are least able to afford
access fees and publishing costs and yet they
work side by side with researchers in other
sectors
09/04/2024
14

15. Imperial College London 09/04/2024
15
Deepening the inequity

16. Commercial publishing: from
growth in subscriber numbers
(finite?) to growth in number of
funded articles (infinite?)
From one kind of inequity to another
09/04/2024
16

17. Imperial College London
Imperial College London
Privileging the privileged
“The results show, in general, that the likelihood for a
scholar to author an APC OA article increases with male
gender, employment at a prestigious institution (AAU
member universities), association with a STEM discipline,
greater federal research funding, and more advanced career
stage (i.e., higher professorial rank). Participation in APC OA
publishing appears to be skewed toward scholars with
greater access to resources and job security.”
Anthony J. Olejniczak, Molly J. Wilson; Who’s writing open access (OA) articles? Characteristics of OA authors at Ph.D.-
granting institutions in the United States. Quantitative Science Studies 2020; 1 (4): 1429–1450. doi:
https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00091
09/04/2024
17

18. Imperial College London 09/04/2024
18
What next?

19. Imperial College London
A Wicked challenge is a VUCA* challenge
Volatile
Uncertain
Complex
Ambiguous
• Anticipate the issues that shape
• Understand the consequences of
issues and actions
• Appreciate the interdependence of
variables
• Prepare for alternative realities and
challenges
• Interpret and address relevant
opportunities
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volatility,_uncertainty,_complexity_and_ambiguity

20. Imperial College London
“Assuming no other business model takes hold before 2026, librarians
and readers will ultimately decide which route becomes the norm – if
the AM is deemed a suitable replacement for the VOR by either
group, then subscriptions will likely plummet, and the APC route will
hold sway. In the interim, expect more VUCA”
Clarke & Esposito The Brief issue 52 https://www.ce-strategy.com/the-brief/vuca/

21. Imperial College London
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – discontinuing publishing fees
09/04/2024
21
“our quest for a truly equitable and inclusive scholarly publishing ecosystem remains
incomplete”
https://gatesfoundationoa.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/24810787662100-Policy-Refresh-2025-Overview

22. Article by article APC
transactions:
Driving commercial growth rather than good
science
09/04/2024
22

23. Imperial College London
Imperial College London 09/04/2024
23
https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2024/04/04/transitional-agreements-arent-working-what-comes-next/

24. Imperial College London
VUCA*
Volatile
Uncertain
Complex
Ambiguous
• Anticipate the issues that shape
• Understand the consequences of
issues and actions
• Appreciate the interdependence of
variables
• Prepare for alternative realities and
challenges
• Interpret and address relevant
opportunities
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volatility,_uncertainty,_complexity_and_ambiguity

25. help@jisc.ac.uk
jisc.ac.uk
Thank you
Breakout Session D
Read the report: A review
of transitional agreements
in the UK
Tuesday 9th at 16:30 – 17:30
Wednesday 10th at 11:30 –
12:30
Lomond Auditorium