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VIVA: Cambridge University Press Transformative Agreement

Virginia's Academic Library Consortium

This guide has variable layouts and houses the majority of the "sub" pages for VIVA's website.

Cambridge University Press Transformative Agreement

VIVA is beginning a new three-year transformative (read and publish) agreement with CUP.  All participating institutions will now have read access to all of CUP’s over 400 journals, which represents a dramatic expansion of content for many of the institutions.  Corresponding authors at the participating institutions will also be able to publish journal articles open access at no cost from January 1, 2023 through December 31, 2025.  This includes almost all of the CUP journals; around 12 are not allowing open access at this time.  No administration is required by researchers or library staff at participating institutions, and existing transformative agreement institutions will still have access to their own admin portal in RightsLink.  Institutions will receive quarterly and annual cumulative reports detailing their respective publishing outputs.

New for 2024: Beginning on January 1, 2024, the agreement will include open access publishing at no cost in two new Gold OA journal series: Cambridge Prisms and Cambridge Research Directions.
 
Participating Institutions: All public institutions, as well as the participating private institutions: Hollins University, Mary Baldwin University, Randolph-Macon College, Roanoke College, Shenandoah University, University of Richmond, and Washington & Lee.
 
Author Resources: Author resources for publishing OA are available here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/authors/journals/publishing-open-access/convert-your-article-to-open-access. The slides linked below document the author publishing workflow.

The key element to note is the decision point around OA, which is the step where an author signs their license to publish. The author experience here will depend upon the journal they are publishing into:

  • The majority of the journals follow the process set out on slide 8. Post-acceptance, an author will be directed to a page which hosts the license forms for their journal. They must select the OA license and sign it. At this time, CUP does not have a way to inform authors that they are covered by a transformative agreement on this page, but prior to this step they do encourage authors to check whether they are covered by a transformative agreement using the Waivers and Discounts tool.
  • 128 of the journals use an improved license solution, where authors are directed toward a dynamic form which does inform authors that they are covered by a transformative agreement.  An example of this form is on slide 9.
  • If authors do not publish OA but are eligible to do so under an agreement, CUP contacts them soon after publication – this is the retroactive OA process set out on slide 10. This language informs authors that they are covered by an agreement and can make the OA decision at this stage in full confidence of no additional cost. This process is applicable to all journals and is handled entirely by Cambridge.

 If you have questions about this agreement, please write to viva@gmu.edu.