Transformative agreements in Brazil: necessary progress or increased dependence?

By Ricardo Limongi França Coelho

Introduction

Imagem: Samuel Hagger by Unsplash.

Starting in 2024, CAPES intensified its policy of transformative agreements with international scientific publishers, signing contracts with Springer Nature, Wiley, Elsevier, IEEE, American Chemical Society (ACS), and the Royal Society Publishing. These agreements allow Brazilian researchers affiliated with more than 430 institutions to publish in open access without individually paying article processing charges (APCs). The initiative represents a significant investment, estimated at more than US$43 million annually, and raises important questions about the course of scholarly communication in the country.

This post proposes an analysis of this policy, considering three dimensions: the international context of criticism of transformative agreements, the experiences of countries and institutions that have chosen alternative paths, and Brazil’s unique position as a historical leader in non-commercial open access (OA) through the SciELO Network.

The scientific publishing business model: a brief overview

To contextualize the discussion, it is useful to revisit the publishing models currently in operation. In the traditional subscription model, publishers charge libraries and institutions for access to content in witch authors do not pay, but articles are behind paywalls. In the Gold OA model, authors or their institutions pay APCs for articles to be immediately available; these fees range from US$3,000 to US$11,000 in high-impact journals.

Hybrid journals combine both models: they operate by subscription but offer the option of open access upon payment of APCs. It is in this context that transformative agreements arise, designed to facilitate the transition from the subscription model to open access, integrating reading and publication costs into single contracts.

There is also the diamond open access model (Diamond OA) , in which neither authors nor readers are charged. Funding comes from public institutions, universities, scientific societies, and funding agencies. The SciELO Network, created in 1997, has operated predominantly under this model for almost three decades.

The double dipping issue and structural criticism

One of the main criticisms of transformative agreements relates to the phenomenon known as double dipping, charging twice for the same content. The study Does double dipping occur? The case of Wiley’s hybrid journals¹ published in Scientometrics analyzed 1,141 hybrid journals from Wiley between 2015 and 2021 and concluded that “the increase in the proportion of open access articles did not result in lower subscription prices; therefore, there is no denying that double dipping occurs”.

In practice, institutions continue to pay subscriptions for access to closed content while also funding APCs for open access publication in the same journals. A survey by Research Libraries UK found that British libraries paid £14.2 million in subscriptions to Elsevier and £937,000 in APCs for hybrid journals from the same publisher, generating additional revenue of more than 6%.

These figures become even more relevant when we consider the profit margins of large publishers. Elsevier operates with a margin of 38.4%, Wiley with 32.1%, and Springer Nature with 27.7% (Research Professional News, 2025). These percentages are higher than those of companies such as Apple (24.6%) and Google (21.2%), according to an analysis by Larivière, Haustein, and Mongeon²  (2015).

International experiences: disruptions and renegotiations

Several countries and institutions have opted for paths other than conventional transformative agreements, which offers relevant comparative perspectives.

The German consortium DEAL, which brings together more than 700 academic institutions, conducted lengthy negotiations with major publishers. After negotiations with Elsevier collapsed in 2016, nearly 200 German institutions were left without access to the publisher for years. The final 2023 agreement set the cost at €2,550 per article, a reduction of approximately 40% from the previous period. The experience demonstrated that collective bargaining by hundreds of institutions can significantly alter the power dynamics with publishers.

MIT ended negotiations with Elsevier in June 2020 and remains without a contract, saving approximately $2 million per year. Library Director Chris Bourg stated, “This is both the right thing to do in terms of our values of public engagement and the right thing to do from an economic standpoint.”

The University of California, responsible for almost 10% of US research, canceled its contract with Elsevier in 2019. During the period without access, researchers resorted to alternatives such as preprints, interlibrary loans, and direct contact with authors. The agreement signed in 2021 established a shared costing model considered more favorable.

The French CNRS made decisions of high symbolic value: it canceled its subscription to Scopus (Elsevier) in January 2024 and announced the end of access to Web of Science (Clarivate) as of January 2026, saving €1.4 million annually. The funds will be redirected to open databases such as OpenAlex.

The deputy scientific director of the CNRS, Alain Schuhl, justified this decision: “For a long time, research has been tied to indicators that have no relation to the intrinsic quality of the scientific advances described in a publication”³. The institution explicitly encourages its researchers not to pay for APCs in hybrid journals.

The Bibsam Consortium in Sweden canceled its contract with Elsevier in 2018 after a 20-year relationship. During the 17 months without access, a survey of 4,221 researchers revealed that 54% were negatively affected, 37% were not affected, and 38% viewed the cancellation positively. The new 2020 agreement guaranteed unlimited publication in open access journals in more than 2,000 journals.

The Netherlands, through the VSNU, has secured an agreement covering 95% of Dutch articles in open access. However, critics such as Sarah de Rijcke (Leiden University) have warned of the risks of granting publishers “privileged partner” status and the potential “transfer of intellectual capital from universities to a single company.”

cOAlition S and the recognized limits of transformative agreements

cOAlition S itself, a consortium of European funding agencies that actively promoted transformative agreements as a path to open access, recognized their limitations. In January 2023, it announced the end of financial support for these agreements after December 2024, stating that “transformative agreements are not increasing [the transition to open access] quickly enough.”⁴

A study by the UK’s JISC calculated that, at the current rate of journal conversion, it would take at least 70 years for the five major publishers to convert their titles under transformative agreements to full open access (Scholarly Kitchen, 2024). cOAlition S’s 2026-2030 strategy represents a significant pivot, prioritizing diverse models such as Diamond OA and preprints.

The paper Six Myths, Busted⁵ (2021), published by librarians from institutions such as the Gates Foundation, the University of Minnesota, and CUNY, systematized fundamental criticisms: agreements are “limited to research-intensive institutions and consortia,” creating “a hierarchical access system for open publication”; APCs “remain at the center of transformative agreements”; and only 25% of agreements registered with ESAC have publicly available pricing information.

It is at this point that Brazil’s position deserves specific reflection. Latin America operates the world’s largest diamond open access ecosystem, with 95% of journals not charging APCs (2024). The SciELO Network, founded in 1997 by FAPESP and BIREME, predates the discussions on Plan S and transformative agreements by more than two decades.

The network now hosts more than 1,600 journals in 13 countries, with an average publication cost of US$300 to US$400 per article, a fraction of the amounts charged by commercial publishers. Redalyc (Red de Revistas Científicas de América Latina y el Caribe, España y Portugal) and AmeliCA (Acceso Abierto para América Latina y el Sur Global) complement this ecosystem, representing a cooperative, non-commercial, and academically led infrastructure.

Abel Packer, co-founder and director of SciELO, has questioned the APC model: “If SciELO can produce a state-of-the-art edition for US$300-400 per article, why are academics paying much more to commercial publishers?”⁶The question points to a structural tension: Brazil invests significant resources in agreements with commercial publishers, while it has its own consolidated infrastructure and expertise accumulated over almost three decades.

cOAlition S recognized the Latin American model when it published, in March 2022, the Action Plan for Diamond Open Access ⁷, endorsed by more than 146 organizations. The document identifies SciELO, Redalyc, and AmeliCA as references for a scientific publishing system that does not rely on APCs.

The evaluation system as a critical variable

A complete analysis of the APC policy cannot ignore its relationship with the scientific evaluation system. CAPES’ Qualis still favors publications in high-impact international journals, most of which belong to commercial publishers. This creates systemic pressure: researchers need to publish in these outlets to advance their careers; these publications demand high APCs, and the government assumes the costs through transformative agreements.

The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), signed by more than 22,000 researchers and institutions from 159 countries, explicitly recommends that impact factor should not be used as a proxy for individual quality. The French CNRS signed DORA in 2019 and reformulated its assessment system. In Brazil, approximately 1,200 researchers signed individually, but no national funding agency formally adhered to it.

The Metrics Project (2022–2023), a partnership between Brazilian universities and DORA, identified three priorities: raising awareness about responsible assessment practices; understanding which indicators are useful and which are misused; and training in qualitative assessment. Reforming the assessment system appears to be a necessary condition for reducing dependence on commercial publishers.

Recognizing tensions and pointing the way forward

CAPES’ own Open Access Working Group recognized in a 2024 report “the commercialization of Open Access by publishers, which imposes high APC costs” and “the unsustainability of a financial model based exclusively on APCs.” At the same time, it concluded that transformative agreements are “currently the most appropriate path,” emphasizing the need to simultaneously strengthen national journals.

This position reflects a real tension: agreements solve a concrete problem for single researchers, especially young researchers which lack their own (grant) resources, while channeling public resources into a model that the international community increasingly questions.

International experiences suggest that transformative agreements can be tools for transition but should not be treated as an end goal. Three complementary approaches emerge from the comparative analysis:

Validity period and conditions: establish a clear transition schedule and include transparency and progressive cost reduction requirements in contracts, following the example of European consortia.

Overhaul of the assessment system: review Qualis to value publications in high-quality open access journals, reducing systemic pressure to publish in high commercial impact outlets. Formal adherence to DORA would signal institutional commitment to this change.

Investment in national infrastructure: redirect part of the resources currently allocated to APCs to strengthen SciELO, institutional repositories, and Brazilian journals. If US$ 43 million per year flows to publishers with margins of 30-38%, a fraction of this amount applied to national infrastructure would generate significantly greater publishing capacity.

Concluding remarks

Brazil occupies a unique position in this debate: it is both a global leader in non-commercial open access, through the SciELO Network, and an adopter of transformative agreements on a significant scale with commercial publishers. This apparent contradiction reflects real tensions between short-term international visibility and long-term scientific sovereignty.

The experience of countries such as France, Germany, Sweden, and the United States shows that there are alternatives to passively accepting the conditions imposed by large publishers. The CNRS’s decision to break with Web of Science and redirect resources to open databases, such as OpenAlex, offers a transition model that prioritizes infrastructures controlled by the scientific community.

CAPES’ APC policy meets a legitimate demand from Brazilian researchers for international competitiveness. The question that remains is whether this short-term solution should be consolidated as a permanent state policy or whether Brazil will use its accumulated expertise in open scientific publishing to lead a more structural transition.

As Jan Velterop noted in these pages in 2018, preprints and new publication models represent “an opportunity, placing [journals and institutions] at the center of the development”⁸  of scholarly communication. Brazil is in a position to be at that center—not as a consumer of commercial solutions, but as a protagonist of alternatives.

Notes

1. SHU, F., & LARIVIÈRE, V.. Does double dipping occur? The case of Wiley’s hybrid journals. Scientometrics, [online]. 2023, vol. 128, pp. 4151–4168. [viewed 28 January 2026] https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04800-8. Available from: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-023-04800-8↩

2. LARIVIÈRE, V., HAUSTEIN, S., & MONGEON, P. The oligopoly of academic publishers in the digital era. PLOS ONE. 2015, 10(6), e0127502. [viewed 28 January 2026]. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127502. Available from: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0127502↩

3. The CNRS is breaking free from the Web of Science [online]. CNRS. 2025 [viewed 28 Jan 2026]. Available from: https://www.cnrs.fr/en/update/cnrs-breaking-free-web-science↩

4. cOAlition S confirms the end of its financial support for Open Access publishing under transformative arrangements after 2024 [online]. cOAlition S. 2023 [viewed 28 January 2026]. Available from: https://www.coalition-s.org/coalition-s-confirms-the-end-of-its-financial-support-for-open-access-publishing-under-transformative-arrangements-after-2024/↩

5. FARLEY, A.; LANGHAM-PUTROW, A.; SHOOK, E.; STERMAN, L. B.; WACHA, M. Transformative agreements: Six myths, busted. College & Research Libraries News [online]. 2021, vol. 82, no. 7, ISSN: 2150-6698 [viewed 28 January 2026]. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5860/crln.82.7.298. Available from: https://crln.acrl.org/index.php/crlnews/article/view/25032↩

6. PACKER, Entrevista Abel Packer. SciELO em Perspectiva, 2013 [viewed 28 January 2026]. Available from:. https://blog.scielo.org/blog/2013/07/15/entrevista-abel-packer/↩

7. Action Plan for Diamond Open Access [online]. cOAlition S. 2022 [viewed 23 January 2026] Available from: https://www.coalition-s.org/action-plan-for-diamond-open-access/↩

8.VELTEROP, J. O que significa uma nova abordagem (para periódicos, conselhos de pesquisa)? SciELO em Perspectiva, 2018 [viewed 28 January 2026]. Available from: https://blog.scielo.org/blog/2018/07/19/o-que-significa-uma-nova-abordagem-para-periodicos-conselhos-de-pesquisa/↩

References

Acordos transformativos [online]. Portal de Periódicos CAPES. 2024 [viewed 28 January 2026]. Available from: https://www.periodicos.capes.gov.br/index.php/acessoaberto/acordos-transformativos.html

Action Plan for Diamond Open Access [online]. cOAlition S. 2022 [viewed 28 January 2026] Available from: https://www.coalition-s.org/action-plan-for-diamond-open-access/

cOAlition S confirms the end of its financial support for Open Access publishing under transformative arrangements after 2024 [online]. cOAlition S. 2023 [viewed 28 January 2026]. Available from: https://www.coalition-s.org/coalition-s-confirms-the-end-of-its-financial-support-for-open-access-publishing-under-transformative-arrangements-after-2024/

Elsevier parent company reports 10% rise in profit, to £3.2bn. Research Professional News. 2025 [viewed 28 January 2026]. Available from: https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-world-2025-2-elsevier-parent-company-reports-10-rise-in-profit-to-3-2bn/

FARLEY, A.; LANGHAM-PUTROW, A.; SHOOK, E.; STERMAN, L. B.; WACHA, M. Transformative agreements: Six myths, busted. College & Research Libraries News [online]. 2021, vol. 82, no. 7, ISSN: 2150-6698 [viewed 28 January 2026]. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5860/crln.82.7.298. Available from: https://crln.acrl.org/index.php/crlnews/article/view/25032

LARIVIÈRE, V., HAUSTEIN, S., & MONGEON, P. The oligopoly of academic publishers in the digital era. PLOS ONE. 2015, 10(6), e0127502. [viewed 23 January 2026]. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127502. Available from: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0127502

MIT, guided by open access principles, ends Elsevier negotiations [online]. MIT News. 2020 [viewed 23 January 2026]. Available from: https://news.mit.edu/2020/guided-by-open-access-principles-mit-ends-elsevier-negotiations-0611

MOUTINHO, S. Latin American journals are open-access pioneers. Now they need an audience. Science [online]. 2024, vol. 386, no.6726  [viewed 28 January 2026]. Available from: https://www.science.org/content/article/latin-american-journals-are-open-access-pioneers-now-they-need-audience

PACKER, Entrevista Abel Packer. SciELO em Perspectiva, 2013 [viewed 28 January 2026]. Available from:. https://blog.scielo.org/blog/2013/07/15/entrevista-abel-packer/

San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment [online]. DORA. 2012 [viewed 28 January 2026]. Available from: https://sfdora.org/read/

SHU, F., & LARIVIÈRE, V.. Does double dipping occur? The case of Wiley’s hybrid journals. Scientometrics, [online]. 2023, vol. 128, pp. 4151–4168. [viewed 28 January 2026] https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04800-8. Available from: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-023-04800-8

The CNRS is breaking free from the Web of Science [online]. CNRS. 2025 [viewed 28 Jan 2026]. Available from: https://www.cnrs.fr/en/update/cnrs-breaking-free-web-science

Transitional agreements aren’t working: What comes next?. Scholarly Kitchen, 2024 [viewed 28 January]. Available from: https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2024/04/04/transitional-agreements-arent-working-what-comes-next/

UC and Elsevier: FAQs. Office of Scholarly Communication. Office of Scholarly Communication da University of California. 2021 [viewed 28 January 2026]. Available from: https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/uc-publisher-relationships/uc-and-elsevier/

VELTEROP, J. O que significa uma nova abordagem (para periódicos, conselhos de pesquisa)? SciELO em Perspectiva, 2018 [viewed 28 January 2026]. Available from: https://blog.scielo.org/blog/2018/07/19/o-que-significa-uma-nova-abordagem-para-periodicos-conselhos-de-pesquisa/

About Ricardo Limongi França Coelho

Professor of Marketing and Artificial Intelligence, Universidade Federal de Goiás (UFG), Goiânia–GO,and Editor-in-Chief of Brazilian Administration Review (BAR) da ANPAD journal, DT-CNPq Scholarship Recipient.

Translated from the original in Portuguese by Lilian Nassi-Calò.