A transformative agreement is the combined provision of two services for one cost: OA publishing and reading access to all subscription journals:

Reading provision

• Online access to the Cambridge full journals package including research and non-research content
• Perpetual access to all journal volumes published within the agreement term
• Shallow back-file access in line with individual journal terms, for the duration of the agreement term

Open Access publishing provision

• Uncapped or capped no-cost OA publishing in all hybrid, gold OA and Research Open journals within our full journals collection.

Cambridge is committed to helping authors and librarians maximise the impact of a transformative agreement at a local level via the following evolving set of resources:

Dedicated email inbox – openresearch@cambrige.org 

• An email support service for authors and librarians to assist with any practical questions relating to a transformative agreement. We strongly encourage the use of this resource.

Resources for Librarians

• An onboarding webinar for your library: visit our training page for more information
• A dedicated agreement page to help broadcast awareness to authors
• Quarterly article reporting, showing all articles published OA and non-OA
• Additional materials to make the most of your Transformative agreement with recommendations for how to best promote your agreement
• Support with retroactive OA for any eligible articles that do not publish OA

Resources for Authors

• Your institution will be loaded into our eligibility checker, which enables authors to check eligibility to publish OA via an institutional agreement
• Guidance on publishing OA in the Cambridge workflow

Transformative agreements are most successful when a library is actively and successfully raising awareness of the OA publishing opportunities available. However, the institution is not solely responsible for any element of the promotion, or day-to-day management of the agreement. Your time will be needed to help set up the agreement, via completing some short pieces of information, and enabling a particular setting in our third-party system. Once up and running, a transformative agreement can be entirely self-sufficient. Several support points are available, detailed further, above (see what support Cambridge provides to institutions participating in transformative agreements?).

We are continually working to improve workflows to make the process as seamless as possible. A recent enhancement is an option to switch on auto-approvals in the publishing portal, providing those who prefer a touch-free approach with even greater ease and efficiency.

To guarantee a live agreement from 1st January in a calendar year, the deadline for returning your onboarding questionnaire (see My institution would like to join a transformative agreement, what next?) to us is 1st December the previous calendar year. It is possible to elect to join the agreement after this, however the live date for the OA publishing provision may be delayed.

If any articles are published after 1 January but before the agreement becomes active, please be assured that these will be eligible for retrospective open access under the transformative agreement once it is in place. 

Our transformative agreement model sets us on the path toward achieving this aim in a way which is viable for us, the publisher, and sustainable for you, the institution. The model now has over 2,500 participants worldwide

Whether your institution is traditionally research intensive or not, participating in a transformative agreement provides important local value-add, and plays an active role in advancing our mission.

Articles that comply with the following criteria will be automatically eligible:

• Corresponding author affiliated to a participating institution
• Be accepted for publication in a Cambridge University Press journal within your institution’s chosen journals collection
• Article accepted for publication within the term of the agreement
• Be original research – eligible article types are research articles, review articles and rapid communications, brief reports and case reports.

Upon article acceptance authors are advised of their eligibility to publish via a transformative agreement as part of the author information form. The eligibility assessment is based on the criteria outlined above. Insitutional affiliations are validated by the author.

If an article has a transformative agreement eligible ROR ID, we assess the article under additional criteria relevant to the agreement (such as acceptance date, article type, in addition to other criteria noted above). If the article is eligible for inclusion under a live agreement the author’s APC will automatically be waived once they select to publish their article OA.

A vast majority of our customers have an unlimited (uncapped) agreements with Cambridge to facilitate OA publication for as many authors as possible. This supports us in our mission for an open future. (@Jo will have text for this) .


However, we understand that there might be a need to control costs for these types of agreements which might require a limited publishing offer. This type of agreement entitles your institution to cover the cost of OA for a set number of articles.

Please contact your usual sales representative if you would like to discuss alternatives to the capped agreement we have indicated for your institution.

Please contact your usual Cambridge sales representative with any questions – we will be happy to walk you through your quotation or answer any questions you have about participating in a transformative agreement.