Why engage with transformative agreements in scholarly publishing? Analysis of customer and publisher press release statements

Purpose How open access (OA) should be supported has been a frequent point of debate during the last 3 decades as different pathways have been created and evolved. One particular point of contention has been the use of institutional contracts between customer institutions and academic journal publishers, so-called transformative agreements (TAs), where subscription-based reading access is bundled with OA publishing rights. This study explores the motivational reasonings given by customers and publishers engaging with TAs. Design/methodology/approach This study provides a thematic content analysis of customer and publisher statements from 95 press releases announcing new TAs involving five large scholarly journal publishers. Existing literature on motivational reasoning for open science, OA, and TAs was reviewed to create an initial set of codes to be used, which was complemented with an inductive process producing additional codes based on categorization of reasonings that did not fit within the initial codes. Findings The study found that TAs were supported for a variety of reasons, where both customers and publishers stressed better research dissemination, facilitating a transition towards OA publishing, and improved workflow management for publishing and invoicing. Customers emphasized economic and equality aspects while publishers did so to a notably lesser degree. Originality/value This study complements the active area of bibliometric studies on TAs with a rich qualitative study based on a set of press releases that have not been used for this type of research, establishing a solid foundation for future studies to build upon.