Open Access Publishing

Transformative Publishing Agreements

Transformative publishing agreements are contracts negotiated by libraries and publishers that seek to change the scholarly communications landscape by moving away from subscription-based models (pay-to-read) towards models focused on open access (pay-to-publish), often by including open access publishing fees (also called article processing charges or APCs) in the contract.

Springer/Nature (Read and Publish Agreement) 

• Benefits for ISU affiliates:

  • Waiver of OA publishing fees.
  • Copyright retention of published articles: the OA article will be published under the Creative Commons CC BY / CC BY-NC license, meaning the author is free to redistribute the material in any medium or format.
  • Full-text access to over 4100 Springer journals, 7 Nature titles, and Scientific American. 

• Requirements:

  • The ISU author must be the corresponding author of the article.
  • The author must identify themselves during the author identification process by using an institutional email address.
  • Have an article accepted in an eligible journal. Eligible journals.xls

Why is the  ISU Library Pursuing a Transformative Publishing Agreements?

Idaho State University Library seeks to “Serve as a leader in the promotion of open educational resources and open access” (Academic Services Unit Report 2025-2029). One way that the Library can contribute to this objective is to support and advocate for new modes and economic models of scholarly communication.

The current pay-to-read scholarly communication model is financially unsustainable and unjust in how it limits access to publicly funded research and scholarship. Transformative publishing agreements undertaken by libraries and other institutions seek to shift scholarly publishing towards a more equitable model by focusing a larger share of their financial investment on open access models (pay-to-publish), which make research freely available to anyone, anywhere, rather than subscription-based models (pay-to-read), which disproportionately limit access to research and scholarship.

Changing the scholarly communication landscape will be challenging and require everyone involved in research and scholarship to work together, and the Idaho State University Library remains committed to pursuing opportunities that serve both the reading and open access publishing needs of our affiliates.

What is a Read and Publish Agreement?

A read and publish agreement is a type of transformative agreement where both subscription fees and open access publishing fees, often called article processing charges (APCs), are combined into a single contract. With a read and publish agreement, the Idaho State University Library not only pays subscription fees to a specific publisher, the Library also pays fees that give ISU  affiliates the opportunity to make their articles open access.

With these agreements ISU affiliates can publish their research open access, with no out-of-pocket cost. Any open access article published under a read and publish agreement is paid for by the ISU Library and made available for anyone, anywhere to read immediately upon publication.

What is a Publish and Read Agreement?

A publish and read agreement is another type of transformative agreement where only open access publishing fees (APCs) are included in the contract; reading subscription-based articles is included at no additional charge.

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