Scaling up open access publishing through transformative agreements: Results from 2019 to 2022

The Biochemical Society's transformative Read & Publish (R&P) agreements follow an all‐inclusive and unlimited model (developed in collaboration with other society publishers) that cover all titles, both hybrid and fully open access (OA), and does not place caps on article numbers. This case study shows that these R&P agreements have significantly boosted OA uptake in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. It also shows that the agreements are most effective in regions where there is adequate funding, high research output and a willingness from institutions to engage collectively (through consortium agreements). Where these conditions do not exist alternative models will be needed to complement R&P—in our case we plan to implement Subscribe to Open from 2025 onwards.


INTRODUCTION
The Biochemical Society publishes seven journals, two of which are fully gold open access (OA) titles and all titles, and all article types, are included in Read & Publish (R&P) agreements, without any cap on the number of articles published.By the end of 2022, with 3 years of R&P deals, more than half of all content in the five hybrid journals had been published OA.Greater OA uptake in certain regions prompted a deeper-dive comparison to isolate success factors and to explore the degree to which we as a publisher might replicate these positive impacts globally.
The year-on-year comparisons presented in this study use relative data (annual percentages of OA publishing).The period of this study covers volatile publishing years where the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic produced unusual upswings in submissions and publications, as did the papermill effect in one of the fully OA titles (about which more is described in the Region 3 study).The following years have shown decreases from a 2020 peak despite uncapped transformative agreements (TAs) that might be thought to incentivize submissions.In order to filter out the distractions of these peaks and troughs we have not used actual numbers of published articles, and instead focused on the relative proportions of OA publishing across each year.
Through concerted and strategic action at a national level by library consortia groups-Jisc in the United Kingdom, and CAUL in Australia and New Zealand-OA has shifted to become the predominant route of publication in this region of our study.Our data indicate that North America, behind this curve by a few years, is moving in a similar direction with higher uptake of OA in 2022.By contrast, OA publishing from China, which at the start of the study represented the region with the highest OA output across our portfolio, shows a dramatic decline.We believe this volatility may be a result of a lack of OA policy guidance, overreliance on the article publishing charge (APC) model, academic malpractice, as well as a lack of TAs which might otherwise support a more stable and diverse OA publishing output.
We conclude by providing the reasons motivating our drive towards institutionally funded OA models, which we plan to expand beyond R&P in future years to include Subscribe to Open.

REGIONS
For this analysis, three contrasting regions were selected, with some geographically disparate regions grouped together based on shared characteristics.
• The first regional grouping is that of the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand • The second is the United States and Canada • The third is China Region 1: United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand Although geographically very distinct regions, these have been aggregated for the sake of this analysis as they are the countries where early TAs were negotiated with consortia on a national level-with Jisc in the United Kingdom and CAUL in Australia and New Zealand.These partnerships were hugely important for the Society in developing the R&P offering, as well as driving uptake when initially launched as pilots in 2020.By 2022, there were 17 CAUL institutions and 36 Jisc institutions signed up, and the proportion of articles from these countries published OA had increased significantly to over 80% in 2022, up from just around 40% in 2019 (see Fig. 1).The increase in OA publications was most dramatic in Australia and New Zealand where the proportion of OA articles rose from less than a quarter in 2019 to 87% in 2022.Whilst usage from UK R&P institutions doubled between 2020 and 2022, the dramatic increase did not extend to Australasia.Institutions in Region 1 who joined in 2020 published three and a half times more OA articles in 2021 than they did in 2019.At the same time, R&P spend for these institutions in 2022 was only 6% higher than their total spend across subscriptions and APCs 4 years earlier in 2019-well below inflation or legacy subscription price increases.For this same cohort of institutions in 2019, the total spend (across subscriptions and APCs) per OA article published was around £4650 and by 2021 total spend (on R&P agreements) per OA article had dropped to £1370.
The numerous success factors we attribute to growth of OA in this region can be grouped under two headings:

Region 2: United States and Canada
In North America, TA uptake and OA article publishing is trailing behind that of countries in Region 1.There has been a moderate increase over the period 2019-2022; however, in 2022 twothirds of OA papers were still being funded by APCs (see Fig. 2).
Where institutions showed a willingness to participate, agreements have been negotiated on an individual institutional basis.
In 2022, we signed our first consortium-level R&P agreement in the region with the University of California, covering all 10 campuses.We are trying to forge more, new relationships with the statewide or regional library consortia operating in these countries.
The boost that TAs can provide is only starting to show.
However, for the cohort of North American institutions who converted between 2020 and 2022, OA publications rose more than fourfold (for institutions in the United States and Canada b.We have a subscription-only consortium deal in place, and no TAs and therefore no means for driving institutionallyfunded OA.where the Society saw a decline in OA publishing over the period analysed.However, usage data showed a threefold increase for Chinese institutions between 2020 and 2022.Had a national TA been in place, offering unlimited OA publishing, instead of a standard subscription agreement, we expect the OA trend may have looked quite different.

CONCLUSIONS
R&P has been most effective where consortia have presented TAs collectively to a large group of institutions at once, as was the case in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
In discussion with R&P partners, the model that we have adopted-unlimited read and uncapped OA publishing across our entire portfolio-has been welcomed.To replicate the success we have had in the first region of our analysis, we have and will continue to prioritize consortia and institutional agreements targeting regions where OA is mandated at the national level, through government and funder agencies.Our organizational size and resourcing requires a targeted approach with the aim of maximizing the impact of R&P and bringing fee-free OA to the largest numbers of authors.
However, there are many nations where the external market forces driving OA publication do not prevail and where our finite resourcing limits the number of agreements we can hope to negotiate at any one time.
The evidence presented in this case study has strengthened the society's commitment to facilitate more institutionally funded OA models, enabling ever more of our authors to publish OA feefree.The APC model conflicts with a value system that is based on equity and inclusion.Furthermore, we have also experienced the volatility and vulnerability to exploitation that an authorfunded model presents.We are therefore planning the introduction of Subscribe to Open in 2025 to run alongside our R&P models, which will help to achieve further immediate open access at scale through institutional support networks.

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1 Open access growth in Region 1: Proportion of articles by access type for authors from the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, between 2019 and 2022.
who moved from standard subscriptions to TAs between 2020 and 2022 and remained subscribed in 2022, OA publications increased 480% between 2019 and 2022, (albeit from a low base).Halfway through 2023, we are hopeful that more individual institutions as well as consortium groups, particularly those who have started to support TAs with other publishers, will convert their traditional subscription to R&P agreements, not least because of the external forces at play.a.The OSTP Nelson Memo (Nelson, 2022) and resultant mandates from funders are likely to impact the growth trajectory of OA in this country.We expect OA compliance to rise significantly in the United States coming years.b.Canada's Tri-Agency Open Access Policy of 2015 (Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications, 2015) has not yet been updated but there may yet be top-down mandates and monitoring to accelerate OA growth in this region in line with other countries.Region 3: China OA publishing trends in China stand in stark contrast to those seen in the first two regions.Across the period of this study, China started off with very high levels of OA, with 90% of articles from corresponding authors based in China published OA in 2019 (see Fig. 3).This was entirely funded by APCs and concentrated mostly in a single full-OA sound science journal: Bioscience Reports.APC publications from authors based in China peaked in 2020 and in recent years we have seen steep declines, which we attribute to a number of factors: 1. Publisher-controlled factors a.In 2019, we identified that Bioscience Reports had been targeted by papermills and in response more restrictive editorial quality control checks have been put in place.This has led to more papers being rejected and the consequent decrease in publications.