Unboxing Transformative Agreements

Transformative agreements have been in the news a lot lately, on both sides of the Atlantic. But what are the details of these new contracts between publishers and libraries which fund open access (OA) publishing by faculty members in addition to paying for access to subscription titles? Will they actually transform scholarly publishing by providing a sustainable funding model for OA, or are these agreements providing cover for publishers to maintain the status quo in spite of scholars’ efforts to transition to an OA future? To answer these and other important questions, research on the text of these agreements must be undertaken.

Join us during Open Access Week for a presentation on the results of the first systematic study of transformative agreements. This soon-to-be-published research focuses on agreements between European consortia and academic journal publishers. As Dr. Didier Torny will explain, he and his co-author discovered a great deal of diversity among the documents and made a number of critical observations regarding the ways these agreements are facilitating a sustainable future for OA publishing, and ways they are not.

Registrants will receive a link to download a copy of the manuscript, “Unboxing Transformative Agreements: a Systematic Study of Contracts between European Consortiums and Academic Journal Publishers (2015-2020).” Registration is free and open to all.

About the Speaker

Didier Torny’s research works are at the crossroads of the sociology of mobilization, the sociology of law, public policies studies and science and technology studies. On risk and health issues, his publications have underlined the role of alarm raisers in the agenda setting theory, helped to clarify the role of administrations in writing, implementing and controlling public regulation and discussed the emergence of new forms of government, based on traceability, to address them. He has conducted his research programs on many fieldworks: prion diseases, asbestos, pesticides, vaccines, diethylstilbestrol and endocrine disruptors, pandemic influenza.

Didier Torny joined the Center for the Sociology of Innovation (CSI) in 2016, where he keeps on doing fieldwork on a political economy of academic publications, especially with David Pontille and Quentin Dufour, notably on evaluation & peer review practices and on publishing business models. He is also project officer at the CNRS Open Science Department, a member of the French Open Science Committee, and contributes to Scriptopolis, a blog on urban writings, with CSI colleagues.

For more information, please contact:

Chris Barnes – cbarnes@adelphi.edu