Publisher  agrees its first TA in Mexico with Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) signaling increasing momentum and support for OA across the Americas

Springer Nature has today agreed its first transformative agreement (TA) in Mexico with partner Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), in Mexico. The TA is also the first and largest institutional TA for Latin America, showing extended support for open access (OA) across the Americas. It follows the publishers’ first institutional TAs in Canada and Latin America – Colombia – earlier this year, and its landmark agreement with the University of California in 2020. These agreements show clear commitment across all Americas  to OA and increase the reach and impact for their research outputs.

With this agreement, over 30,000 affiliated researchers will now be able to publish OA, at no cost to them, benefiting from higher usage, download and citation rates, and therefore reach and impact of their work, that OA has been proven to achieve.

Maria Lopes, Vice President, Institutional Sales, Springer Nature commented:

“With agreements in place in Canada, the US and Colombia, we have seen the development of sustainable models for the regions, ensuring open science can continue to grow and thrive in the Americas. We are delighted to have been able to agree our first deal in Mexico with UNAM and strengthen our longstanding partnership. We remain focused on facilitating global open access and supporting academic collaboration, discoverability and usability at scale.”

Running from 2022 to 2024, the TA will include read access to over 2.300 journals across the  Springer, Adis and Nature portfolios. It will enable affiliated researchers to publish OA, in over 1900 Springer Nature journals, with an expected 1.000 articles to be published Gold OA during its term.

The publisher’s 17  national agreements, which alongside its institutional deals, now support researchers from over 2,650 affiliated institutions to publish OA, enabling an expected 41,400+ OA articles to be published a year via these routes.  This shows that TAs are the fastest way to enable the OA transition. They enable more authors to publish OA and offer authors an easy way to comply with funders’ OA requirements, whilst enabling participating institutions to better manage the cost and administration of OA by combining journal subscription (read) access along with OA publication costs (APCs).

In addition, earlier this year Springer Nature released a report which demonstrated the impact that publishing in its fully OA portfolio can have for authors, with research receiving higher usage, downloads and citations than any other fully OA publisher.

Springer Nature continues to support all authors regardless of discipline, location or funding, to publish OA. More about the publisher’s commitment to OA and open research can be found here and here.

cOAlition S is pleased to report that 27 publishers – who publish more than 2000 journals – have embraced the Journal Comparison Service (JCS) and shared their service and price data, responding to the call for transparent pricing of publishing services. cOAlition S wishes to praise these publishers for incorporating the values of openness and price transparency into their processes, in line with Plan S principles. The JCS was developed in response to the growing calls from the research community for greater transparency regarding the services publishers provide and the prices they charge. Through this free, online service, the publishers’ clients – primarily libraries and library consortia who procure publishing services on behalf of the research community – are able to better understand how journals and publishers compare on a range of key indicators. This information can be used to help determine whether the prices charged are commensurate with the services provided.

Starting to walk the talk on transparency

The 27 publishers who have provided data through this service include large, mixed-model publishers such as Wiley, fully Open Access publishers including PLOS, the Open Library of Humanities, and F1000, and a number of society/university publishers including the Royal Society, Rockefeller University Press, and the International Union of Crystallography.  A complete list of publishers (and journals) participating in the JCS can be found at https://journalcheckertool.org/jcs.

Kathryn Sharples, Vice President of Open Research at Wiley, explained the motivation behind their decision to participate in this service:

“Wiley is committed to exploring new ways to provide greater visibility of the services our journals provide. We are participating in the JCS because we believe it is important to engage with a range of stakeholders to increase transparency in research publishing.  We look forward to learning lessons from this first year in the JCS and evolving our approach to transparency for the future”.

Michael Markie, Publishing Director at F1000, added:

“Openness and transparency around our pricing allow us to clearly demonstrate the value of F1000’s publishing services. We feel it’s important to show libraries, institutions, and funders exactly what they are getting for the prices we charge”.

A supportive service for future investment decisions by libraries

Access to the JCS is open to any library and library consortia (End Users) who negotiate and participate in Open Access agreements with publishers. Since late September, when the end-user portal was launched, an increasing number of libraries and library consortia from Europe, Africa, North America, and Australia have registered with the JCS.  This clearly shows the need for a service that provides a better understanding of the nature of publishing services and the prices charged for them and can pave the way for library consortia to add contractual terms to their future agreements with publishers requiring them to share such data.

Caren Milloy, Director of Licensing at Jisc, stated:

“The data supplied via the JCS is a key step in fostering a shared understanding of publisher services. It will enable us and our members to transparently assess value derived and support decision making about the future investment of institutional and public funds”.

Although researchers do not have direct access to the data held on the JCS, they can see whether a specific title has provided data to the JCS or not, thanks to an integration with the Journal Checker Tool.  Robert Kiley, Head of Strategy at cOAlition S, commented:

“Through the integration with the Journal Checker Tool, researchers can see whether their preferred journal supports values like openness and transparency. They can then use this information in determining where to submit their manuscripts for publication”.

San Francisco- The Universidad Nacional Autonoma Mexico (UNAM) and the Public Library of Science (PLOS) today announced a one-year agreement, brokered by Accucoms (PLOS’ regional representative),that will allow UNAM researchers to publish in PLOS ONE and other select PLOS journals[1] without incurring article processing charges (APC). Flat fee agreements and PLOS’ other models shift publishing costs from authors to research institutions based on prior publishing history and anticipated future growth with PLOS. The agreement with UNAM starts on January 1, 2023.

“We are thrilled to be collaborating with UNAM, our first flat fee institution in Mexico, which furthers our global outreach that will continue on through Latin America,” said Sara Rouhi, Director of Strategic Partnerships for PLOS.  “As the largest research institution in Mexico, UNAM is uniquely well-positioned to demonstrate the benefits of Open Access publishing and Open Research practices.”

Dr Susana Lopez Charreton, a virology researcher from the Biotechnology Institute of the UNAM, comments, “This agreement is great news for UNAM researchers as it helps to bring their findings to a wider audience in excellent OA journals. It is not uncommon to resort to publishing our work in other, less prestigious journals due to APC payments that are often too high for the budgets we have. The opportunity to publish in the PLOS family will greatly benefit our research.”

Dr. Alejandro Zentella-Dehesa, a cancer cell biologist and principal investigator of the department of Genomic Medicine and Environmental Toxicology of the Institute for Biomedical Research of the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM), said “Incorporation of UNAM to this agreement with PLOS will help a lot to communicate the results generated in original research as the final step of the academic activity of university researchers. UNAM is one of the most prominent and productive academic institutions in Latin America with an active and significant number of publications in all fields of scientific and humanistic research. However, publication of high-quality manuscripts in international journals with demanding peer review committees is frequently hampered by a combination of high publication fees and budget limitations. This agreement between UNAM and PLOS represents a valuable opportunity for UNAM researchers to publish high quality results in journals from this prestigious editorial group, free from budget limitations. All this will contribute to make knowledge generated at UNAM available to the international community.”

“It is exciting to see and be part of the early developments towards OA publishing agreements in Latin America, and to work closely with UNAM as a pioneer institution in the region in this aspect. I’m happy to have been able to facilitate conversations between PLOS and UNAM to reach this important and unprecedented agreement, that will undoubtedly serve as an example for many other institutions in Mexico and Latin America in the years to come,” said Anouk Snijders, Commercial Manager Latin America at Accucoms.

PLOS’ Flat Fee model enables APC-free publishing with many of PLOS’ titles, which creates efficiency and reduces administrative overhead for managing gold APC funds. UNAM and PLOS will also collaborate on future data, metrics, and tools for institutions to evaluate Open Access publishing agreements.

UNAM joins a growing list of institutions to sign agreements with PLOS. Others include the Consortium of Swiss Academic Libraries (CSAL), the Big Ten Academic Alliance, the University of California system, Jisc (including University College London, Imperial College London, University of Manchester),  NorthEast Research Libraries (NERL) and the Center for Research Libraries, the Canadian Research Knowledge Network among others to support their researchers through publishing deals with PLOS.

The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) last year honored PLOS as the co-winner for Innovation in Publishing for its Community Action Publishing model.

[1] PLOS Computational Biology, PLOS Genetics, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, PLOS Pathogens and PLOS Digital Health.