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Researchers
Information about transitional journals agreements at the university.
Eligible authors means corresponding authors: (i) who are “Affiliated” with the Institution, i.e. who are students enrolled at or accredited to the Institution or who are teaching and research staff employed by or otherwise accredited to the Institution, whereby in case of articles published by multiple authors only the corresponding author may qualify as an Eligible Author; (ii) who have signed one of the then current open access publishing agreements used at the Publisher to publish an article under an Open Access Licence in one of the Journals the current list of which (subject to change by the Publisher) and (iii) for whom the Institution has confirmed the status as affiliated Author.
Historically access to scholarly journals has been by subscriptions to packages by university libraries and research institutions and organisations. The annual subscription costs rise exponentially each year and pressure has been placed on publishers over a number of years to move to open access models allowing faster and free at the point of use access to scholarly publications to researchers, libraries, institutions and members of the public.
A Transitional Agreement for journals is an arrangement that will move the business model from subscription-based, to one where a publisher charges a fair price for open access publishing services.
Jisc have negotiated such deals with a number of publishers to enable a large-scale transition towards open access by incorporating a publish element into the agreement allowing researchers from subscribing institutions to publish in and access subscription-content from the publisher without paying the article processing charges (APC). The funds from the consortial agreement are used for the APCs although this is spread across all subscribing institutions and is finite so that funds may run out before the agreement expires or the types of publications funded may be limited to ensure the widest reach.
Note that the title lists below are subject to change during the life of the transitional agreements and are for guidance only. You are advised to check with the Office for Scholarly Communications prior to submission of your article whether the publication provides the option to publish on an open access basis as part of a transitional agreement with the university.
Hybrid journals are titles published by the publisher that also offer authors the option to publish on an open access basis. From 2021, plan S funders (UKRI, Wellcome Trust, European Commission, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation etc.) do not support the costs of publishing Gold open access in hybrid titles, requiring authors to achieve compliance with their policies by either publishing through pure Gold OA titles or via the Green route with zero embargo and an appropriate open (usually CC BY) licence.
Non-Gold OA titles in a Transitional Agreement are in the process of being flipped to a Gold OA business model, and are thus eligible for plan S OA compliance.
Gold OA titles are journals published by the publisher that publish all content on an open access basis, usually under CC BY licence.
As mentioned above, hybrid journals offer the opportunity for individual articles to be published openly whilst paywalling other content from the same title. This arrangement leads to titles "double dipping" where libraries, universities and other public funds are spent on accessing and publishing content in the same title by distinct revenue streams for the publisher.
Eligible articles means articles that have been accepted for publication in a participating title during the period of the transformative agreement by Eligible authors who are authorized by the university to submit the article to the publisher under the terms of the agreement.
We currently have the following transitional agreements - that is access to journals we can read and designated titles our authors can publish in without an Article Processing Charge fee being paid.