This blog post was written by Ioana Liuta, SFU Digital Scholarship Librarian.

Two new transformative agreements are coming to SFU through 2026. SFU Library is pleased to announce that as a Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) member institution, it has signed two new three-year, read-and-publish agreements with Oxford University Press and Elsevier. This is in addition to the existing read and publish agreements SFU Library has signed with Cambridge University Press, Canadian Science Publishing (CSP), Institute of Physics, Microbiology Society, Royal Society Journals, Sage, and Wiley.

In addition to the SFU Central Open Access Fund, which now gives priority to early career researchers, all SFU researchers may benefit from the Library’s memberships and publishing agreements which can provide either waivers on article processing charges (APCs) or discounts for articles published by SFU authors.

We previously wrote about transformative agreements in at least two other Radical Access blog posts, but to reiterate, the transformative or transitional agreements were designed especially for hybrid journals, where access to the journal is subscription based, but authors are provided with an option to pay a fee to unlock access to their individual article, basically a journal operating both subscription and open access publishing models.

A journal may be fully open access ("gold OA") or a "hybrid" journal, in which articles are behind a paywall unless authors pay an APC to make their article publicly available. In a transformative agreement or read and publish agreement, the most common type, the subscription fees are repurposed to cover both reading access and publishing open access, in the same journal.

Elsevier transformative agreement

Due to the Read-and-Publish Agreement with Elsevier, SFU corresponding authors will benefit from unlimited open access publishing in more than 1,800 Elsevier hybrid journals at no cost to the author (i.e., with no article processing charge (APC). For Gold OA, the discount will remain in 2024 at 20% and will be reduced to 15% in 2025 and 2026, and 10% in 2027.

Oxford University Press transformative agreement

As of February 1, 2024, SFU authors benefit from unlimited open access publishing in more than 350 Oxford hybrid journals at no cost to the author (i.e. with no article processing charges (APCs), and a10% discount on APCs when publishing in Oxford’s gold open access journals. 

Authors must identify themselves as affiliated with SFU in order for their article to be verified and approved for no charge OA under the agreement.

Both the new and existing transformative agreements enable SFU research to be openly accessible for worldwide impact, increased readership and citations, a broader audience and a greater geographic reach, for the benefit of all, researchers and society as a whole.

Further information

To view all publisher agreements and discounts available through the SFU Library, visit the Open access publisher agreements and discounts page.