I'm not the only person to offer a substantive critique of "transformative agreements," but I'm going to share my thoughts on why I believe they're a con.
Please share widely and add things because this isn't meant to be exhaustive
#Openaccess
#bigsteal
1/
Please share widely and add things because this isn't meant to be exhaustive
#Openaccess
#bigsteal
1/
First of all, I'm tired of UC jiving us for years about so-called transformative agreements (TA). They aren't transformative. They are daylight robbery and a luxury we can't afford.
Most importantly, TA doesn't shift the means of publishing away from the monopolists. 2/
Most importantly, TA doesn't shift the means of publishing away from the monopolists. 2/
TA doesn't change ownership and control of journals away from the oligopoly and over to academia/scholars/researchers/readers. Paying a handsome price for the monopolists to make articles OA is a conservative approach to OA that strengthens existing commercial publishers 3/
TA strengthens an APC approach (which are priced vastly above the true cost of publishing), cements hybrid journals, and hurts library and scholar-led publishers. Continuing to funnel money to monopoly publishers is counter-revolutionary in this sense and a form of trickery 4/
It tries to fool people into thinking that a solution is at-hand, but makes the existing power structures more resilient. It lets the universities off the hook for much-need promotion and tenure reform and does nothing to move away from impact factors. 5/
Read the fine print on the TA (which should always be prefaced by saying "so-called" or putting transformative in quotes). The UC-Springer TA excludes the Nature journals, which is the family of journals that the university pressures/incentivizes it's own authors to publish in 6/
The APCs in these journals, usually excluded from TA, are often >$5000.
TA only kicks in if the institutional affiliate is the *corresponding author.* And TA usually don't cover all article types. The APC in Projekt DEAL's springer TA was €2750. We supposed to celebrate that? 7/
TA only kicks in if the institutional affiliate is the *corresponding author.* And TA usually don't cover all article types. The APC in Projekt DEAL's springer TA was €2750. We supposed to celebrate that? 7/
Norway's TA with Elsevier excluded the Cell-branded journals. The APC for Cell is $5,900.
TA create more inequality. OA for the rich institution's articles and paywalls for yours. This creates more visibility, readers, citations, impact, reputation for the already rich school 8/
TA create more inequality. OA for the rich institution's articles and paywalls for yours. This creates more visibility, readers, citations, impact, reputation for the already rich school 8/
TA are a form of false generosity, a supposedly benign gift to the world. But it makes no effort at reciprocity. It's a one-way street of OA and doesn't support anyone else's work being OA. This is selfish.
TA automatically deflate the value of everyone else's subscriptions 9/
TA automatically deflate the value of everyone else's subscriptions 9/
As more articles springer articles become OA under UC's TA, anyone subscribing to springer will be paying the same price for fewer articles.
Check out the details of UC's Cambridge TA. It's changed this year to encourage authors to share the cost, to have "skin in the game" 10/
Check out the details of UC's Cambridge TA. It's changed this year to encourage authors to share the cost, to have "skin in the game" 10/
The TA created new bureaucracy and administrative costs and hurdles. It's done through the copyright clearance center! There's no easy way to see how much the authors are expected to contribute to the APC until *after* an article's accepted and by logging into a different sys 11/
Don't faculty and researchers already have "skin in the game"? Why burden them with sharing an APC and creating more steps to publishing? Why individualize the process? I discuss UC's neoliberal approach of burdening authors more in this piece jlsc-pub.org/articles/abstr… 12/
