We recently submitted our annual Transformative Journals (TJ) report to cOAlition S, and here we share a few highlights with you.

The amount of research published open access (OA) in our TJs increased by almost 70 percent in 2021, and our TJ programme as a whole exceeded its Plan S OA growth target for the year.

More than two thirds of the hybrid journals we publish have now been registered as TJ, and they are playing an important role in our plans to transition the vast majority of our journals research publishing to open access by 2025.

We are busy building an open future and a key part of that is unlocking the potential of research through the greater collaboration, transparency and accessibility that open access brings. That impact can be clearly seen in our annual report to cOAlition S, with OA articles getting about 1.6 times more citations and about 3.5 times more full text views on our publishing platform, Cambridge Core.

Overall, the proportion of research articles published Gold OA in Cambridge journals increased to 36 per cent last year – a 47 per cent increase on 2020. We expect that to have reached 50 per cent by the end of this year.

While not all journals in the TJ programme met their individual targets in 2021, these have been granted an exception by cOAlition S, meaning authors can continue to publish with those journals in compliance with Plan S requirements.

We are proud of the progress of our TJ programme and with the overall increase in the amount of research we are publishing open access, something that is also being driven by the increasing number of transformative agreements we have with institutions around the world. As more and more authors become eligible for Gold OA under such agreements, so more journals will be able to increase the number of articles they publish open access.

We see Transformative Journals as an important part of our engagement with Plan S and will continue to register new TJs as quickly as we are able. The road ahead to full OA still has challenges, such as ensuring that there are no financial barriers to any author publishing OA, and we are determined to continue working with all stakeholders to tackle these. We look forward to making it possible for every author to publish their research as open access.

You can download our full update to cOAlition S here.

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