Hi Anneliese, thanks for sharing this and raising these good questions! As background, CDL had a conversation with CSHP in Feb. 2021 about a transformative agreement,
and there was a lot of good energy on both sides, and they were game to work with us on multipayer, but we had a full list of publishers that PTWG had prioritized for 2021-22 that we were working with and indicated to them that while we were very interested,
we would need to stage the conversation. In addition, since there was no existing tier 1 systemwide license, we knew it would be more difficult to structure an agreement.
You raise one of the key questions – how this offer relates to the principles that have been underlying UC-wide transformative agreement negotiations so far (e.g.
consistent author experience all year, inclusion of OA journals, cost-neutral or cost-saving, and in most cases, aiming to incorporate multipayer workflow to support sustainable agreements). A related question is whether anything in the terms would set a
precedent or undermine broader conversations for a UC-wide agreement.
In terms of a UC-wide agreement: There is a plan to revisit publisher priorities for transformative agreements fairly soon and at that time we could look at where
CSHP fits into the priorities.
I’ll be interested to hear what campuses are thinking regarding this.
Thanks,
Ellen
----
Ellen Finnie
Director of Shared Collections
California Digital Library
University of California, Office of the President
From: Scholarly Communications CKG <[log in to unmask]>
On Behalf Of Taylor, Anneliese
Sent: Monday, December 13, 2021 8:33 PM
To: SCHOLARPUB-L <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: [SCCKG] Cold Spring Harbor Press transformative agreement offer
Hi SCCKG colleagues! I'm curious what you all think about Cold Spring Harbor Lab Press's offer for a journal transformative agreement of sorts. This offer was sent to our Head of
Collection Development. Here are the highlights from CSHL, with my notes added in brackets in green (full language attached):
1. Term of the agreement is three years, 2022-24. Your license price will be fixed over this period.
[$16,500 for UCSF; full journal subscription package]
2. Your subscriber license will become an OA publishing license and your payment will now cover the publication of a number of OA articles with no further fees from
[corresponding] authors. (The number will depend
on where the articles are published, as our journals have different APC fees.)
[this would amount to about 5 articles yearly; in 2020 our count was lower; in the two prior years it was higher]
3. Once that fee threshold is met (i.e., the value of the OA articles surpasses the amount of your license fee), your authors can continue to publish accepted articles as Open Access, with a 10% discount on our standard
APCs, without limit.
4. Open Access articles are published with a CC-BY 4.0 license, with the author retaining copyright.
5. You have the option to create a branded channel in the bioRxiv preprint server (which will also include preprints in medRxiv). We note that UCSF-affiliated authors have deposited 2,750 preprints in bioRxiv and medRxiv
since 2014.
CSHL Press takes care of everything - the Library doesn't have to deal with approvals or reimbursements. What's not to love?! The downside is the fairness issue of those authors
who happen to get their article accepted after we've reached the threshold. On the other hand, seeing how many people are opting out of our UC TAs, maybe we won't use up all our 'free' articles.
Have any of your campuses taken up this offer? Are there any considerations for a future UC-wide deal we should think of before agreeing to it?
Thanks,
Anneliese