Transforming Journal Publishing
Transformative journals are a form of open access publishing where a journal commits to transforming to becoming fully open access, and removing costly author-facing fees.The Library is proud to support initiatives towards fully open access journals.
Traditional Journal publishing relies on paid subscription services to fund the publishing of journals. Transformative journals are a form of open access publishing where a hybrid journal (i.e., one that offers both gold and green open access options) commits to transforming to being either fully gold open access or fully green open access. While they do this, they often have agreements with funders that make it permissible to pay for open access in those journals, even where hybrid journals wouldn't be allowed.
To help subscription journals transform to full and immediate open access, the Library supports sustainable open access models. Promoting these models ensures that funds formerly used to pay for subscriptions are redirected to pay for open access services.
We are able to support this shift towards open access publishing by backing models developed by several large organisations, such as Open Book Collective and Jisc, who back major initiatives within the education sector.
Major Initiatives in Transforming Publishing
Annual Reviews - Subscribe to Open
demonstrate a commitment to Open Access by endeavouring to make all new issues of their content open access at the point of publication.
Cultural Anthropology OACIP
is participating in the .The main aim of OACIP is to match those who need support or investments for OA publishing with non-profit publishers and journal editorial boards. The program seeks to ensure that its publications, covering traditional and modern topics, reach a wider public audience.
European Mathematical Society - Subscribe to Open
The aims to maintain a fair and sustainable model for future published works. In 2019, it decided to move its collection to open access with full subscription benefits.
Liverpool University Press ‘Open Planning’ - Subscribe to Open
Introduced in 2023, Liverpool’s ‘’ includes the journals Town Planning Review and International Development Planning Review.
Peer Community Journal (Jisc OACF)
The framework helps publications to reach their finance goals without having to pay author-facing fees.
Pluto Journals - Subscribe to Open
All titles are open access. They cover subject areas such as current affairs, international studies, law, political economy, disability studies, and Arab and Islamic studies.
SciPost (Jisc OACF)
The Library is a supporter member of ’s open access community framework, enabling them to reach their funding target and OA publishing goals, with no author-facing fees.
Stichting Linguistics in Open Access - LingOA (Jisc OACF)
The Library is helping employ a part time community manager, who will work to align recommended standards and practices across OA journals in linguistics.