Oxford University Press secures first transformative agreement in South Africa

New read and publish contract with the South African National Library and Information Consortium will provide the regional academic community with greater opportunity to publish open access

Oxford University Press (OUP) and non-profit organization the South African National Library and Information Consortium (SANLIC) have reached a three-year nationwide read and publish agreement. Coming into immediate effect, the agreement will support researchers at SANLIC’s member institutions with publishing their work open access and provide those affiliated with complete access to OUP’s high-quality journals collection.

The agreement with SANLIC is OUP’s first read and publish agreement in Africa and the 35th globally. This reflects the organization’s continued drive to increase open access publishing, in line with its mission to further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

Speaking about the agreement, Alastair Lewis, Sales Director at Oxford University Press, said: “I am delighted to announce our new transformative agreement with SANLIC and look forward to seeing its members and the research community benefit. As the largest university press publisher of open access research, we believe that read and publish agreements play a key role in supporting a sustainable transition to open access.”

“Oxford University Press is an important publishing venue for our researchers and this agreement enables them to publish fully open access in journals where they previously could generally not afford to do so. This is a most significant advance on prior agreements which were limited to read access to these information resources only,” said Ellen Tise, Chairperson of the SANLiC Board of Directors. “This agreement enables our member institutions to repurpose subscription expenditure to finance open access publishing and to significantly enhance the research and learning capabilities of South African institutions.”

The agreement comes after a number of new global read and publish agreements with major contracts recently signed with the Austrian Academic Library Consortium (Kooperation E-Medien Österreich; KEMÖand the Consortium of Swiss Academic Libraries (CSAL). Read more about OUP’s read and publish offering and agreements here: https://academic.oup.com/pages/open-research/read-and-publish-agreements