Research

Transformative agreements with magazine publishers

In the Frequently Asked Questions below you will find all the information regarding the agreements with several publishers. 

A transformative agreement is the contract negotiated between a consortium or a university with a publisher of scholarly journals where the subscription model that was in force until then is changed. The terms of the contract go from "paying to read" to "paying to read and to publish in open access." 

For the author of the article, it means being able to choose between publishing free of charge or getting lower APC fees.

Article Processing Charges (APC) are the fees a publisher charges to authors to publish in open access journals (golden journals) or in subscription journals that allow their article to be published open access. (hybrid journals). 

You can check the conditions and the list of journals included in the agreements signed with the following publishers: 

The PDI group must comply the following criteria:

  • Corresponding authors of the article
  • First UAB affiliation
  • Scientific production in EGRETA, with public visibility
  • ORCID code reported in EGRETA, with public visibility
  • Scientific production in DDD

If the applicants comply with these criteria, they will be sent an email reporting the commitments linked to be able to have the APC free of charge and will have to answer by accepting the conditions. The accomplishment of all the conditions will be checked.

 

PhD students group must comply the following criteria:

  • First author
  • Corresponding author of the article
  • First UAB affiliation

PhD students with a non UAB thesis director will receive, as a maximum, two APC along their PhD.

In both groups the requests will be assigned by order of arrival while vouchers last.

 

After checking if the researcher complies with the UAB criteria to get the APC funding, a mail will be sent with the commitment that must be accepted to obtain the APC. This commitment is the following:

  • The research data associated with the article will be published in the repository CORA RDR. To do that, contact your library via Pregunt@

The Library Service will deposit the article in the Dipòsit Digital de Documents.

On the webside of the Consorci de Serveis Universitaris de Catalunya (CSUC) you can find all the updated information on the evolution of these agreements with each of the publishers.

No. You can see the journals included: 

PDI and UAB doctoral students who wish to publish in any of the eligible journals included in these agreements, and who fulfil the criteria approved by the Comissió de Recerca, Transferència i Innovació, may apply for a free APC through the authors’ platform of every publisher. Depending on the number of requests received, additional criteria may be established to be eligible for the APCs. 

Usually, after the peer review process, the publisher will inform you that your institution can offer you free APC and you can get it from the same publisher platform. You will be notified later if your request has been accepted or denied. 

It is the correspondent who has to apply for free APC and the request will go to the university where the author is affiliated. 

If the applicant (correspondent) is affiliated with two different universities that have signed the agreement, he will have to choose through the publisher's platform to send his application to one of the institutions. 

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