CSUC participates in and supports the CRUE Commission on the negotiation of the Transformative Agreements with several publishers.
As is being done in other European countries, it is intended to transform the current subscription to Open Access publications where the corresponding author is from one of the institutions included in the agreement.
For further details about each transformative agreement, available since 2021, as well as further information for researchers to publish their work in OA, check out the following fact sheets (in Catalan):
In addition to the transformative agreements, there are discounts for Open Access publishing:
Since 2018, the charges for open access publishing (APC fees) have been monitored in the universities of Catalonia to have information on the cost of scientific communication. That is, to have real data on the charges for paying to read and paying to publish. OA monitoring provides the following data:
- The expenditure for open publishing has increased since 2019. Nevertheless, 2022 marked a trend reversal with a total cost of €2,665,241, which is about 14.14% less than 2021.
- APC expenses account for 22.15% of the total expenditure of universities on journal subscriptions (€12,029,994). This expense must be considered as additional to that amount already paid for subscriptions. The two expenses -APC and journal subscriptions- represent the cost of scientific communication by universities.
- Grouping the expenses for open publishing by APC taxes and the taxes of the transformative agreements for open publishing, the total OA expenditure accounts for €6,687,828, of which 39.85% (€2,665,214) is open publishing.
- The overall expenditure in 2022 for scientific communication is €14,695,209, divided into 45.51% (€6,687,828) for open publishing, and 54,48% (€8,007,380) for journal subscriptions.
