Read and Publish Agreements

In 2025 the UK national body Jisc is renegotiating the five largest Transitional Agreement journal publishing agreements (Elsevier, SAGE, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis and Wiley). The key aims of the negotiations are improved financial sustainability and increased equity in academic publishing, more information and key dates are on the Jisc website.

The negotiations are being handled on behalf of all UK universities, and maintaining this sector wide agreement is key to the negotiations being successful. Jisc has also been aligning this work to the journey to Open Access globally.

As a large teaching-focused institution, we make use of  a substantial amount of read access within the agreements, but publish less than some more research-intensive institutions. We are facing similar budget constraints/ rise in costs as much of the rest of the sector. The Jisc negotiations focus on financial sustainability and cost reduction is key for us as an institution.

Through Jisc, London Met are contributing to these negotiations wherever possible. It is in our interests both financially and ideologically for there to be a reset of the UK's current open access agreements. We will be consulting with academic colleagues wherever appropriate throughout these negotiations, and will communicate any updates as and when they become available.

24-9-2025

Initial consultation complete

Alongside other universities nationally, London Met has recently responded to the Jisc consultation on the offers from publishers for new journal agreements from 2026 onwards. Negotiations are currently continuing at a national level and additional updates will be posted to this page once agreements are reached. 

27-08-2025

Sector consultation begins on the big 5 Read and Publish agreements 

Back in April , Jisc started national, sector-wide negotiations over the ‘big 5’ Read and Publish agreements (Elsevier, Sage, Springer, Taylor & Francis and Wiley), as the current agreements are set to end at the end of 2025.

London Met subscribes to two of these agreement, with Elsevier and Wiley, along with partial membership of the Springer Nature agreement.  These provide us with read access to the publisher’s non-Open Access e-journal articles as well as inclusive Open Access publishing in most of their journals for London Met Authors.

Following extensive negotiations over the past few months, Jisc's negotiating team have now presented five offers to the sector for consultation. 

The Library team is undertaking a thorough analysis of the offers in preparation to answer JIsc’s consultation survey by the deadline of the 29^th August.

Once Jisc have received the sector’s feedback on these deals, its team will analyse the results and present next steps to the sector.