Navigating Open Access and Transformative Agreements: A Case Study of the University of Maryland

Abstract

“What should we be doing as a public institution when it comes to open access and transformative publishing agreements?” Most large US research institutions are facing this question, including the University of Maryland, College Park. This article explores this issue by looking at the University's publishing landscape from a high level. It then dives deeper into three recent transformative agreements the University library has entered, investigating pricing, usage, and publishing data for a nonprofit society publisher, a for-profit commercial publisher, and, finally, a university press. The goal is to better understand how these agreements intersect with university-sponsored scholarship, library budgets, and the implications for the academic publishing landscape.