UBC authors looking to publish in peer-reviewed journals by Oxford University Press and Elsevier are now eligible for cost-savings thanks to new transformative agreements signed by the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN).
In February 2024, CRKN signed a new three-year, read-and-publish agreement with Oxford University Press (OUP). With this agreement, scholarly authors at UBC and other member institutions will be eligible for unlimited open access publishing in more than 350 OUP hybrid journals at no cost to the author. Authors can also benefit from a 10% discount on article processing charges (APCs) when publishing in OUP’s gold open access journals.
More recently, in April 2024, CRKN followed up by announcing a new three-year, read-and-publish agreement with Elsevier. Authors at participating member institutions, including UBC, will benefit from unlimited open access publishing in Elsevier’s hybrid journals without having to pay an APC. This includes more than 1,800 hybrid journals and 165 core hybrid specialty titles in Elsevier’s catalog.
“The new transformative agreements have already had a positive reception from faculty at UBC. There has been a growing interest from campus researchers to publish open access, but the issue of faculty assuming the publication costs has created a challenge that is difficult to overcome. With these new kinds of agreements the costs to publish and read are bundled together, removing that challenge,” says Erin Fields, Open Education and Scholarly Communications Librarian at UBC Library Digital Programs and Services. “With the agreements with Elsevier and Oxford University Press, two of the larger publishers of UBC research, we hope faculty will take advantage of publishing open access, which is proven to increase access and readership.”
Transformative agreements have been changing open access publishing at UBC and are a clear indicator of UBC Library and UBC Okanagan Library’s continued commitment to open access. UBC’s participation in these transformative agreements, and as a CRKN member institution, is a joint effort co-funded by UBC Library and UBC Okanagan (UBCO) Library. Together, UBC Library and UBCO Library are able to significantly reduce or even eliminate the costs of open access publishing that would normally be paid by UBC authors, and instead enable those authors to redirect much needed funds back towards their research efforts.
Find out more about all the open access publisher discounts available to authors at UBC.