The ESAC Transformative Agreement Registry lists around 540 transformative deals for 2024, concluded with about 60 publishers and covering more than 60 countries. While these agreements follow the same underlying principle of combining open access publishing and reading with the ultimate goal of open access transformation, they tend to differ significantly in detail. Drawing on examples and negotiation experience, the presentation will look into key elements of this type of agreement, attempts at standardisation and best practice, and reasons for variation. It will also ask what has been achieved so far and what challenges remain, especially in terms of the transformative nature of the agreements and what we mean by that.
Hildegard Schäffler (Mon,) studied this question.