A “transformative agreement” (sometimes called a “transitional” or “read and publish” agreement) is a relatively new type of contract negotiated between an institution and a publisher based on open access principles. Rather than a university's library paying a subscription fee that only provides access to its own students and faculty, a transformative agreement pays for both access to subscription-only content for the university's community and allows its faculty to publish their scholarship as open access in any of the journals/platforms covered by the agreement. This increases the impact of scholarship published under the agreement by making it accessible to anyone, not just those who have subscription access through their own institutional affiliations.
Other OA Agreements
Research Online (RO) is a digital repository intended to collect, organize, and disseminate the scholarly work created or sponsored by faculty, students or staff of St. Thomas. Research Online is administered by The University of St. Thomas, Minnesota Libraries' staff who work with university departments, research centers, and individual faculty to select, submit, and manage content. Members of the academic community are invited to contribute their completed scholarship for long-term preservation and worldwide electronic accessibility.
In many cases, yes! You will definitely need to double check the terms of your publisher agreement, but most journals allow archiving of a pre or post-print version of an article to your university's institutional repository. Specific parameters will vary from journal to journal, be sure to check with your publisher about their policies. Many journals have their self-archiving policies available on their website.
What is the different between a preprint, post-print, and published version of an article?
Pre-print: the version of an article originally submitted to a journal prior to peer review (sometimes called an "author's original"). NOTE: colloquially, this term is sometimes used more loosely to refer to any version that comes before the final, published version, but publisher policy language often uses "preprint" to mean "author's original").
Post-print: the version of an article accepted for publication after all changes that came from the peer review process have been applied but before the formatting and typesetting the publisher uses for the final version are applied (this version is sometimes called an "accepted manuscript" and is the version most commonly put into institutional repositories).
Published Version: This is the final version of the article as published by the journal. This version usually cannot be put into institutional repositories without express permission granted by the journal.
© 2023 University of St. Thomas, Minnesota