TRANSFORMATIVE AGREEMENTS
Transformative agreements promote accessibility to local research which is crucial for accumulating and developing a corpus of local knowledge for the growth and development of society – African society. The “SANLiC Framework for Publisher Open Access (Transformational) Agreements” incorporates 16 negotiation principles. These are:
- Inclusivity and social justice must be core . Publishers must have an equity, diversity and inclusion plan that addresses the challenges of researchers in the Global South.
- A single agreement for reading and publishing services.
- Read access will not be compromised for our researchers, including perpetual access and post termination access.
- Researchers can publish full and immediate OA in their venue of their choice to ensure the widest possible reading audience.
- All publications must be under an open license, preferably the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY).
- Publishers will provide tools/mechanisms that facilitate immediate deposit into institutional repositories.
- Publishers will ensure the long-term digital preservation and accessibility of their content through participation in trusted digital archives.
- No cap on the number of full and immediate OA articles.
- Transparency for licensing deals – no non-disclosure clauses. Public money requires transparency of agreement terms and costs.
- The initial term (duration of agreement) will be three years.
- Renewal pricing must include all sites, campuses, and locations at no extra cost.7
- Interlibrary loan (ILL) and document delivery to be permitted.8
- The agreement must reduce and constrain costs9 – publishers must allow SANLiC members the flexibility to join or leave the agreement as their financial situation dictates. 14. Existing non-subscribers may join during the term of the agreement.
- Aid compliance with funder mandates.10
- OA content must be discoverable, and agreements must support improvements in service and workflow for authors and administrators.
