Practice Article

Implementation of Transformative Agreements at the University of Chicago Library: A Case Study

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Abstract

The University of Chicago Library created a working group, composed of librarians across the library, to engage in dedicated and focused work around transformative agreements, including understanding how they work and how the library should be engaging with them in a complex open access (OA) landscape. The working group was charged with specific tasks, including determining challenges and opportunities around transformative agreements, developing criteria for determining when to use the library’s OA fund to pursue an agreement, conducting ongoing assessments of the agreements, and developing a set of recommendations to communicate this out to our wider campus community. The group’s work included piloting several transformative agreements and establishing a rubric to evaluate these agreements. The creation of the group allowed the library to gain valuable knowledge and expertise, engage actively in new models for supporting OA, and start critical conversations on campus. The group continues the work, with the ultimate goal of affordable OA publishing and communicating the value of OA with researchers and campus partners, as well as positioning the library as a campus leader in OA.

Keywords: open access, transformative agreements, rubric

How to Cite:

Harris, J., Fleming, G., Hart, J., Ho, A.K., Kern, B., Mardikes, C. & Werner, D.A. (2025). Implementation of Transformative Agreements at the University of Chicago Library: A Case Study. Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication, 13(1), eP18265. https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.18265

Rights:

© 2025 The Author(s). License: CC BY 4.0