What are transformative agreements?

Transformative agreements are negotiated contracts between institutions (libraries, national and regional consortia) and publishers that aim to transform the business model underlying scientific publishing. Instead of a subscription-based model for accessing content, these agreements shift to a model where publishers are compensated with a fair price for their open access publishing services.

The transformative mechanism of these agreements is based on the fact that the current spending on subscriptions (averaging €3,800 per article) is more than sufficient to support the open access publishing of global scientific production.

Transformative agreements aim to provide universal open access for readers and authors while containing the rising costs associated with commercial scientific journals.

Why transformative agreements?

Transformative agreements aim to eliminate the phenomenon of double-dipping and accelerate the transition to Open Access.

INRiM and transformative agreements

Since the second half of 2020, INRIM has been signing, where possible, multi-year renewals of electronic resources with a transformative approach. Most of these contracts are managed through the CARE-CRUI consortium, which oversees them at the national level for all public institutions (universities, public research entities, etc.). The goal is to move from acquiring subscriptions to publishing articles in Open Access. In general, corresponding authors affiliated with INRIM will be able to choose to publish in Gold Open Access in the hybrid journals of the involved publishers, retaining all copyright and without additional costs.