Causes of Uneven Country-Level Adoption of Transformative Agreements

Determine whether the observed uneven distribution of hybrid open access adoption via transformative agreements across countries—specifically, the high uptake in European countries and South Africa versus the lower uptake in China, the United States, and India—reflects temporary implementation gaps, structural inequities inherent to the transformative agreement model, or deliberate avoidance of such agreements by institutions or consortia.

Background

Analysing more than 13,000 hybrid journals from 2019–2023, the study finds substantial growth in open access enabled by transformative agreements, with the majority of open access in hybrid journals attributable to such agreements by 2023. However, adoption is uneven across countries.

European countries and South Africa show comparatively high uptake, while China, the United States, and India—despite being among the most productive nations—exhibit substantially lower adoption of transformative agreements. The authors explicitly note that it remains an open question whether this pattern is due to implementation gaps, structural inequities inherent in the model, or deliberate avoidance of transformative agreements.