IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ete/msiper/750047.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Trapped in transformative agreements? A multifaceted analysis of >1,000 contracts

Author

Listed:
  • W Benedikt Schmal
  • Laura Rothfritz
  • Ulrich Herb

Abstract

Transformative agreements between academic publishers and research institutions are ubiquitous. The ‘Efficiency and Standards for Article Charges’ 8 (ESAC) Initiative lists more than 1,000 contracts in its database. We make use of this unique dataset by web-scraping the details of every contract to 10 substantially expand the overview spreadsheet provided by the ESAC Initiative. Based on that hitherto unused data source, we combine qualitative and 12 quantitative methods to conduct an in-depth analysis of the contract characteristics and the TA landscape. Our analysis demonstrates that research 14 institutions seem to be ‘trapped’ in transformative agreements. Instead of being a bridge towards a fully Open Access world, academia is stuck in the 16 hybrid system. This endows the legacy (non-Open Access) publishing houses with substantial market power. It raises entry barriers, lowers competition, 18 and increases costs for libraries and universities.

Suggested Citation

  • W Benedikt Schmal & Laura Rothfritz & Ulrich Herb, 2024. "Trapped in transformative agreements? A multifaceted analysis of >1,000 contracts," Working Papers of Department of Management, Strategy and Innovation, Leuven 750047, KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Department of Management, Strategy and Innovation, Leuven.
    • Handle: RePEc:ete:msiper:750047
    Note: paper number MSI_2408
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://lirias.kuleuven.be/retrieve/778207
    File Function: Published version
    Download Restriction: KU Leuven intranet only, request a copy at https://lirias.kuleuven.be/handle/20.500.12942/750047
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Transformative Agreements; Academic Publishing; Open Access; Risk sharing; Elsevier; Springer Nature; Wiley;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ete:msiper:750047. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: library EBIB (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://feb.kuleuven.be/MSI .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.