Next generation open access negotiations at teaching-focused institutions: what matters to us

At Edge Hill, although we focus primarily on teaching, we actively use both the read and publish elements of the seven transitional agreements within our budget. Read access to paywalled journals is essential for providing our students with the materials they need for their studies. The publish element is equally vital. Without a dedicated open access publishing budget, these agreements give our researchers the opportunity to publish gold OA, something that wasn’t possible before. This has significantly changed how our researchers share their work, and it’s great to see more of their publications open access.

We recognise how fortunate we are to access these deals, especially when many institutions and organisations, both in the UK and globally, do not have access to transitional agreements. Finding unbudgeted funding for article processing charges is increasingly unfeasible.

What drives our decisions

At Edge Hill, our purchasing decisions are driven by how well our content supports teaching and learning. Despite a gradual increase in publishing activity, we still spend most of our transitional agreement budget on the read element of an agreement.

We assess the level of demand from students and researchers for read access to specific content. We look at whether subject content is aligned with the current teaching and research interests and, of course, we look at affordability. For our existing agreements, we’ll analyse usage statistics and publications data to see if the data supports a renewal.

Recently, we updated our Collection Development and Management policy and introduced a set of guiding principles that reflect a much broader range of criteria. Alongside traditional metrics like usage and value for money, we place a growing emphasis on other considerations such as the sustainability, accessibility and inclusivity of a resource agreement. These principles mirror the goals of the Jisc negotiations, which increasingly focus on equity in OA.

Investing in open

These principles guide meaningful changes. For example, we’ve reduced spending on the 1:1 e-textbook model due to rising costs and its long-term unsustainability. Instead, we’re exploring ways to promote and highlight open access content across all resource types. We’re also encouraging our academics to choose more openly available materials.

To support this shift, we’ve invested a small but growing sum of money in community-driven OA schemes and infrastructures like Opening the Future and the Open Book Collective. We believe that supporting these initiatives contributes to building a fairer, more equitable knowledge ecosystem, even if it is challenging to do so in the current financial climate.

At teaching-focused institutions like ours, libraries play a key role in advancing OA. Our research offices are small and often overstretched, so that leaves the library in a position to lead the change. Unlike research-intensive universities, we don’t always have senior researchers to champion OA. That makes library leadership even more crucial in our context.

Toward a more inclusive future

Transitional agreements aimed to shift subscription funds toward OA publishing and reduce paywalled research. But the growing volume of articles and the accelerating pace of OA remain challenging for teaching-focused institutions like ours. We need sustainable ways to keep up.

A sector-wide, collective approach is vital if these negotiations are to deliver equitable and financially viable agreements that work in the longer term. These are important negotiations and will require the involvement and support of all institutions, research and teaching-focused from across the community if we are to negotiate from a position of strength.

As a teaching-focused institution, we understand how limited funding can constrain our researchers and readers. This perspective helps us connect with other researchers facing similar barriers globally. These negotiations, alongside those led by other consortia, can play a vital role in tackling global inequity.

Ultimately, we share the same goals as research-intensive institutions: agreements where costs reflect value, and a faster, fairer more inclusive path to open access.