Transformative Agreements in An Academic Library: Two librarians' experience with collection development and this new type of agreement with publishers

McLain, R., & McKelvey, H. (2024). Shifting the collection development mindset: Moving from traditional journal subscriptions to transformative agreements. Library Resources & Technical Services, 68(1), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.5860/lrts.68n1.8218

Audrey Wilcox

Summary

This article, written by Rachelle McLain and Hannah McKelvey and published in 2024, does a great job in describing the processes behind transformative agreements (TAs), what they are to libraries and publishers, as well as the considerations behind implementing TAs. Hannah and Rachelle write about their experiences managing, executing, and negotiating with seven TAs over the course of three years at their academic library at Montana State University. They begin by examining the current literature on the subject and then explain how they were introduced to Tas by attending a 2019 conference. From there, they delve into how TAs can help support equitable open-access opportunities for authors and researchers. Throughout the article, they present research questions, workflows, benefits, and challenges that they encountered during their work. All in all, the researchers concluded that TAs are worth it to a library, regardless of its size or staffing, and that developing the knowledge and skills to work with publishers and authors in creating TAs will be even more critical in the future as more libraries participate.

My Evaluation

I believe this article to be incredibly important to any library looking to start implementing transformative agreements in their collection development processes. Rachelle and Hannah did a great job explaining their work and processes throughout the research and implementation of the TAs within their library. They bring up great considerations and questions that those new to the process should consider, as well as what to look out for when working with publishers. I feel that licensing processes and negotiating with big-name publishers can be daunting enough as it is, and when you add processes like TAs to the mix, it can get even more confusing. Open Access within libraries still has some wrinkles and aspects to work out, but licensing agreements like TAs can create more equitable access to publishing and research in a world of rising article processing fees and costs to authors.