Making the deal the first of its kind for Taylor & Francis in the western United States, the academic publisher announced today that it recently signed a three-year transformative agreement with Montana State University (MSU) in Bozeman, Montana.
MSU faculty, staff, and students will have unrestricted access to content published during the contract period beginning this year through 2024. At no cost, affiliated authors can elect to publish their articles in Taylor & Francis journals offering open access. In general terms, a transformative agreement is the contract between an academic publisher and an institution evolving the traditional, subscription-based, pay to read model to the pay to publish model.
“Taylor & Francis is thrilled to partner with Montana State University on this transformative agreement that further paves the way for open access to research findings,” said Jeff Voci, Senior Vice President & Commercial Lead – Americas, Taylor & Francis.
Doralyn Rossmann, Dean of the Library at Montana State University, said: “We are thrilled to enter into a Read & Publish agreement with Taylor & Francis to improve MSU research impact and discoverability. Increasing opportunities for MSU scholars to make their publications open and freely available makes their research more visible and accessible worldwide.”
An existing consortium of Montana libraries, the Treasure State Academic Information and Library Services (TRAILS) enables the state’s academic libraries to work together to better serve Montana students, faculty and staff members. TRAILS was instrumental in facilitating the agreement with MSU, as well as providing additional resources for TRAILS members. This allows the Montana academic community greater access to Taylor & Francis research articles and to the content freely available from MSU authors, promoting greater content discovery across Montana and beyond.
Authors benefit from open access because it significantly extends the exposure and reach of their scholarly research to a wide audience, without the costs and other restrictions of a subscription model. Taylor & Francis has a longstanding commitment to open access, demonstrated by its diverse open access publishing solutions which meet the needs of each author with rapid online publication, high visibility and increased discoverability for published research.