Transformative agreements

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:

ACM Digital Library
American Chemical Society (ACS)
American Institute of Physics (AIP)
American Society for Microbiology
Cambridge University Press
Cogitatio Press
De Gruyter
Elsevier
Emerald: the APCs for 2025 of this publisher are sold out.
IEEE Xplore: the APCs for 2025 of this publisher are sold out.
John Benjamins
Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC): the APCs for 2025 of this publisher are sold out.
SpringerNature
Wiley: the APCs for 2025 of this publisher are sold out.

Currently the UAB does not have any transformative agreement to publish open access books or book chapters. You can check the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) https://www.doabooks.org/ to find trustworthy open access publishers.

The Academic/Research Staff group must comply the following criteria:

Corresponding authors of the article
Make use of the UAB e-mail in the publication
First UAB affiliation
Scientific production in EGRETA, with public visibility
ORCID code reported in EGRETA, with public visibility
Scientific production in DDD

PhD students group must comply the following criteria:

First author
Corresponding author of the article
Make use of the UAB e-mail in the publication
First UAB affiliation

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

Other active members of the university community:

Corresponding authors of the article
Make use of the UAB e-mail in the publication
First UAB affiliation

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

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.

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 are 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.

No. You can see the journals included:

ACM Digital Library
American Chemical Society (ACS)
American Institute of Physics (AIP)
American Society for Microbiology
Cambridge University Press
De Gruyter
Cogitatio Press
Elsevier
Emerald: the APCs for 2025 of this publisher are sold out.
IEEE Xplore: the APCs for 2025 of this publisher are sold out.
John Benjamins
Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC): the APCs for 2025 of this publisher are sold out.
SpringerNature
Wiley: the APCs for 2025 of this publisher are sold out.

The Academic/Research Staff group, the PhD students and other active members of the university community 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.

Transformative agreements

Transformative agreements

What is a transformative agreement?

What are APC?

Which publishers have reached transformative agreement with UAB?

What are the criteria approved by the UAB that applicants must meet?

Which is the associated commitment related to the acceptation of the APC funding?

Do agreements allow publication in any of the publisher's journals?

Who is entitled to free APC?

How can you apply for free APC?

How does it work if the article has been written by authors from different universities?

What if the applicant is affiliated to two different universities?

Related initiatives open access

Additional information