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This page explains the different types of transformative agreements and how they work.
About transformative agreements
Transformative agreements are intended to help publishers transition their subscription (hybrid) journals to become fully open access. They allow papers to be made open access, on publication, under the CC BY licence. Journals that are fully open access, or allow Green open access with the CC BY licence, also achieve this. All these types of journals meet funders' open access requirements.
Read and publish
'Read and Publish' is one type of transformative agreement. Institutions pay a fee to allow users access to content and Gold open access publishing. Our transformative publisher agreements page explains how to use UCL's 'Read and Publish' agreements.
Subscribe to Open
Another model is 'Subscribe to Open'. In this model, provided the publisher reaches a threshold of subscriptions by a specified deadline, all articles published in the current subscription year are made open access permanently. Astronomy & Astrophysics Journal, EMS Press journals, and some Liverpool University Press journals are published under a Subscribe to Open model. This model meets funders' requirements because authors can also make their articles open access in a repository, on publication, under the CC BY licence (Green open access). Subscribe to Open journals are not included in UCL's list of journals and transformative agreements below.
Fully open access journals
Journals that are already fully open access also meet funders' requirements, because all articles published in them are published open access under the CC BY licence. These journals are listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals. Some fully open access journals are in UCL's transformative agreements; for others, check whether funding is available.
Green open access
Journals that allow UK authors to make their accepted manuscript Green open access, on publication, under the CC BY licence (e.g. Science) also meet funders' requirements.