Read & Let Read: An Alternative to the Transformative Agreement

Authors

Arthur Boston, Murray State UniversityFollow

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

11-5-2021

Publication Title

Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication

Department

University Libraries - Dean's Office

College/School

University Libraries

Abstract

In March 2021, the University of California and Elsevier announced a new transformative deal which included slightly-discounted article processing fees as UC's route to open access in Elsevier journals. Librarians and researchers expressed immediate concern that this deal upheld inequities in the research system. The UC/Elsevier transformative deal, however, is just one of many that include expensive pay-to-publish structures. This commentary proposes an alternative contract between libraries and publishers that would enable wider reading and lower costs, called Read & Let Read. The three main points of a Read & Let Read deal include a half-dollar valuation of individual journal articles, prepayment on a university’s estimated usage, and an equal payment made for usage outside of the university. If a Read & Let Read deal were implemented at UC, UC would pay a slightly higher amount of money to Elsevier than they are expected to at present, and would not flip any articles to open access. Instead, they would contribute toward a more equitably-distributed system of scholarly readership.

Recommended Citation

Boston, A.J. (2021). Read & Let Read: An Alternative to the Transformative Agreement. Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication, 9(General Issue), eP12908. https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.12908

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.