The Library: Open Access

In 2025 JISC are renegotiating the 5 largest Transitional Agreement publishing deals (Elsevier, SAGE, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis and Wiley). The key aims of the negotiations are improved financial sustainability and increased equity in academic publishing, more information and key dates are on the JISC Website.

The negotiations are across all UK HEIs, maintaining this sector wide agreement is key to the negotiations being successful. JISC have also been aligning this work to the journey to Open Access globally.

As a large teaching-focused institution, we make use of  a substantial amount of read access within the agreements, but publish less than some more research-intensive institutions. We are facing similar budget constraints/ rise in costs as much of the rest of the sector. The JISC negotiations focus on financial sustainability and cost reduction is key for us as an institution.

We are compiling the following:

• What content is on reading lists and could be digitised.
• What we can make available as Green OA under Rights Retention.
• What content we would have access to if deals were cancelled, through alternative and Open Access sources.

We undertake to:

1. Look at Read Usage and Reading lists to gather the stats and data required for modelling different scenarios.
2. Integrate search tools that enable access to Open Access versions of content into our Discover library search service and are compiling information on how to access full-text documents.
3. Use our Institutional Rights Retention policy enabling authors to retain rights in their work and make the Author Accepted Manuscript available in the repository as Green OA.
4. Engage with negotiaions across the sector and communicate with academic colleagues as the negotiations progress, and what the impact of achieving a deal (or not) may be.

When you are considering where to publish:

1. If you are involved as an editor or work with publishers, please highlight the need to reach a cost-effective solution across the whole of UKHE.
2. Are you planning to publish with one of the Big 5 included in these negotiations?.
   • Publisher deals, discounts and Green OA options will be updated as we know what is happening with confirmed agreements, but also around processes for articles submitted but not yet published by 31st December 2025.
   • For Hybrid journals (ones that publish both open access and non-open access articles), even if a deal is not reached, you can choose not to pay the APC and use Green Open Access through our Rights Retention policy.
   • Where you are publishing in a fully Gold Open Access journal there may be increased costs as Article Processing Charges will need to be paid.

For read access:

1. Use Open Access articles for your research and reading lists where possible, and where not give the library plenty of time to investigate getting the content for your students.
2. For your research, articles not available as Open Access may be obtained through Request It!