How OA2020 is Advancing the Transition to Open Access

Colleen Campbell is the international coordinator for OA2020—an initiative that brings institutions, consortia, and national research systems together to advance the transition to open access. I have had the pleasure of working with Colleen across a range of open access projects and efforts over the last several years, witnessing firsthand how her strategic leadership has helped libraries worldwide shift their legacy subscription spending toward open access agreements. The community is fortunate to have such a committed and effective advocate working to ensure research remains accessible to all.

Following the recent Berlin Open Access Conference (B17) meeting, we corresponded about OA2020’s evolution, its future, and Colleen’s hopes for the future of open access. Our conversation has been edited.

OA2020 launched with the ambitious goal of accelerating the transition to open access (OA) publishing. Looking back, what do you consider to be the initiative’s most significant accomplishments?

Before I answer that, it’s important to recall the landscape when OA2020 launched in 2016. For nearly 15 years, the research community had pursued two main pathways to open access: creating new fully OA journals and encouraging the deposit of some version of the article manuscript in an institutional repository. But neither approach had succeeded in significantly challenging the dominance of subscription paywalls. While there were notable successes in promoting repository deposit and launching fully open access journals—efforts that remain important and should be celebrated—subscription-based publishing continued to account for around 80 percent of newly published articles and the majority of library budgets. To make matters worse, the Finch Report had legitimized hybrid APCs as an added fee, funneling even more money into subscription-based journals through financial flows outside of institutional or library oversight.

Against this backdrop of unchecked double-dipping and, ultimately, progress that left the root problem intact, it was time to take a different approach—to “follow the money.” The 2015 MPDL White Paper demonstrated that the global library spend on subscriptions was already sufficient to fund the majority of scholarly publishing under an open access model. It also outlined a pragmatic framework for repurposing those existing investments: redirecting subscription spending to support open access publishing.

What OA2020 ultimately achieved was proof of concept: libraries and consortia adopted its approach, successfully transforming their subscription deals into open publishing agreements. In doing so, they enabled large swaths of their institutions’ research output to transition from closed to open, often within just a few years—as clearly illustrated in the ESAC Market Watch. By meeting authors where they were already publishing and working within existing library budget structures that supported those journals, OA2020 provided a scalable, effective boost to the global open access movement.

In terms of specific accomplishments, I could point to the proliferation of agreements—now numbering in the thousands—that enable authors to retain their rights and openly license their work without paying APCs out of pocket. But I think the initiative’s most enduring impact lies in the broader systemic changes it helped to set in motion: greater alignment among libraries, researchers, funders, and university administrations; the development of new workflows and infrastructure necessary to support a fully open paradigm; and, crucially, increased transparency around the financial flows of scholarly publishing. These foundational shifts will be essential for guiding not just current strategies, but also long-term innovations in the ways libraries support knowledge dissemination.

How has the landscape of participation in OA2020 evolved since its inception? Which developments in institutional or regional engagement have been most surprising or encouraging to you?

It has been incredibly exciting to see how the OA2020 community has grown and evolved globally since its launch.

At the most recent Berlin Open Access Conference (B17), which we organized, we welcomed delegations from more than 40 countries representing every continent. Each region faces its own set of hurdles in advancing open access: weak OA mandates, perverse incentives, siloed funding mechanisms, limited data, negative author perceptions shaped by predatory publishing. I’ve described these journeys as rivers flowing from different sources, shaped by unique landscapes, reaching their destinations at different speeds. Awareness, capacity, and alignment of local stakeholders all influence the pace.

This diversity is not a weakness but a deep source of inspiration. The South African National Library & Information Consortium (SANLiC), for example, adopted local principles for “transformational agreements” (SANLiC, 2022). and has become one of the most successful examples of implementation—leapfrogging regions that began earlier (ESAC, n.d.-a). In Brazil, where the diamond OA publishing ecosystem is particularly strong, the OA2020 approach is now being adapted to address the 50 percent of research outputs that authors are still publishing in closed or hybrid journals (ESAC, n.d.-b). And in India, while the national One Nation One Subscription (ONOS) strategy prioritizes expanding reading access for researchers across the country, individual research institutions have begun to negotiate transformative open access agreements independently.

Through OA2020, we’ve worked to foster a global network that enables the library community to speak with a common voice on more equal footing with global publishers—demonstrated, for example, by the B17 final statement.

What inspires me most is how the dedicated individuals within this community rise to the challenge: openly exchanging experiences, collaborating across borders, and building shared resources, like those of ESAC, all while continually pushing the boundaries of library influence in publisher negotiations and in shaping the future of scholarly publishing.

What have been the most persistent challenges OA2020 has faced in advancing the transition to open access? Have these challenges shifted over time, and if so, how?

The challenges have evolved. Initially, we had to work hard to get publishers to engage with transitional and transformative models proposed by our community. But as momentum grew, publishers sometimes moved more swiftly than libraries—integrating open access into their business strategies in ways that, in some cases, co-opted our approaches to serve commercial interests, sidelining the original principles of open access and academic control of copyright.

This shift has highlighted a deeper, more persistent challenge: the complexity of adapting to systemic change within the scholarly communication ecosystem. Many actors, including libraries, researchers, and institutions, are navigating uncharted waters with new models and funding mechanisms and the redistribution of roles and responsibilities.

In the face of this complexity, it is understandable that discussions sometimes take on binary framings—gold versus diamond, article-based versus flat-fee pricing, commercial versus community-led models. Such dichotomies, while often rooted in genuine concerns and practical constraints, can obscure the more nuanced, systemic challenges of scholarly communication—such as the ongoing tension between research evaluation frameworks and the evolving push for innovative publishing models. When framed too narrowly, these distinctions may inadvertently limit the exploration of new approaches.

If we’re going to achieve a more adaptive and inclusive approach to open access, we need to recognize and engage with the complexity and uncertainties of this evolving landscape. We’ll need to work pragmatically within existing structures while developing longer-term strategies that foster incremental, meaningful progress across the many dimensions of this multifaceted “wicked problem.”

Within the OA2020 community, this has translated into an increasing emphasis on broadening our approaches and diversifying our “open access investment portfolios,” as reflected in frameworks like the Big Ten Academic Alliance’s open scholarship strategy or the Max Planck Digital Library’s budget transition strategy. This multidimensional approach has always been a goal of OA2020, and thanks to the progress and learnings of the past years, we are now in a better position to act on it.

The academic publishing ecosystem involves many stakeholders with different incentives. How has OA2020 navigated the sometimes competing interests of researchers, libraries, funders, institutions, and publishers?

Yes, there are many actors in scholarly communication, but I do not see their interests as inherently in conflict. Rather, stakeholders have been managing their own resources or contributions in relative isolation—authors contributing time and effort to share their findings and review others’ work; university administrations powering the research potential of their students and faculty; funders directing resources to drive impact; libraries allocating budgets to support discovery, access, and infrastructure; and publishers providing essential services. They’re all optimizing for their own objectives, often without a clear view of how their investments and financial flows intersect. When we step back and consider the full balance sheet together, however, we have a chance to coordinate investments, reduce duplication, and build a more efficient, impactful system: open access becomes not just a principle, but a shared strategy.

Here’s one compelling example: Before Plan S launched, cOAlition S funders recognized the strategic value of OA2020’s library-led negotiation approach—that it could help achieve author compliance while reducing the need for authors to spend grant funds on hybrid journal fees. So the first implementation phase included a carve-out allowing authors to use grant funds for hybrid APCs when covered by library-negotiated transformative agreements. In practice, these authors rarely needed to use grant funding for APCs anyway, since their libraries had already repurposed subscription budgets to cover open access publishing costs. Ultimately, transformative agreements became instrumental in cOAlition S’s progress, providing authors with a broader range of Plan S-compliant publishing opportunities. Even after the carve-out ended in December 2024, transformative agreements remain a major contributor to Plan S compliance—authors can still publish open access in hybrid journals without using grant funds since their libraries cover the costs, and the coalition’s funders continue to endorse these agreements as an effective open access strategy.

Many transformative agreements have been implemented since OA2020 began. What best practices, issues, or unintended consequences have emerged from these agreements that the community should learn from?

What’s striking is that our ability to learn from these agreements is evolving over time. As institutions have taken on more active roles in enabling open access—supporting authors, negotiating agreements, managing workflows—they’ve begun to uncover a clearer, more detailed picture of where money flows, how decisions are made, and where influence is concentrated. This deeper understanding of what is needed to support an open research paradigm has sparked important, long-overdue conversations.

For instance, it has brought greater visibility to equity challenges—such as disparities in access to publishing resources or exclusion based on geography—that are rooted in the legacy of the subscription system and sustained by its opacity. At the same time, these experiences have made clear that meaningful progress depends on transparency across all aspects of scholarly publishing. Institutions cannot steward a responsible transition to open access without access to reliable and granular data on publishing volumes by institution and country, article-level charges, waiver and discount policies, licensing terms, compliance with editorial and ethical standards, and the application and impact of differential pricing models.

Today, we are in a far better position to understand how funds move through the system and to question whether those legacy investment levels and structures still serve our goals. Recognizing this opportunity, an OA2020 working group is actively studying where current resources are allocated—and how those allocations must shift to unlock a more equitable and sustainable future for scholarly publishing.

What is next for OA2020? Are there specific goals or focus areas that will define the initiative’s work in the coming years?

We’re focused on building on the progress we’ve made and driving further transformation in scholarly publishing. Our next steps are guided by the priorities set out in the latest Berlin conference statement—for example, we’ve launched the OA2020 Working Group on Transparency to make transparency a standard in open access agreements. We’re also expanding our open community programming, so in addition to the monthly OA2020 updates, we’re introducing a new monthly series of focused deep dives on emerging and critical topics.

We’ve been encouraged to see some publishers piloting geopricing models, as we called for at the 16th Berlin Open Access Conference (2023). We’ll continue examining how financial resources are currently distributed and how those allocations must shift to enable large-scale transformation. Because the money is already in the system, just not where it’s needed most.

We’re also exploring opportunities to advance transparency across the publishing ecosystem by promoting open research information practices that reflect the broader values of open science, as set out in the Barcelona Declaration. Finally, we are looking at how transformative agreements can evolve—drawing on the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP) model—to support not just open access, but also responsible editorial standards, open data, and open peer review.

At its core, OA2020 remains a global community committed to sharing strategies, learning from one another, and pushing boundaries. While flipping journals to open access has been important, it has never been the whole picture. Our deeper aim is to shape the scholarly communication landscape in ways that reflect the values of openness, equity, and academic integrity. As long as publishers continue to be part of that landscape, there will be a vital need for the library community to come together—exercising its leadership and agency to assert the conditions and priorities that best serve scholarship and the public good.

What gives you the most hope about the future of open access, and what concerns remain as we look toward a more open research ecosystem?

The road ahead is not without serious challenges. Geopolitical instability is disrupting international collaboration—and the very principle of open—at a time when we need it most. Trust in science is being eroded by opaque publishing practices, paper mills and journal hijackings. And with the rise of AI, some publishers are steering authors toward more restrictive Creative Commons licenses—framed as protective measures—effectively reversing progress made with CC BY. This shift reasserts publisher control over research outputs, allowing them to monetize content—not least through exclusive AI licensing deals—while limiting the academic community’s ability to use the same content to train open, community-led AI tools.

Still, I am fully optimistic. We’re not backing down—we’re stepping up! Institutions, funders, researchers, and even many publishers are more aligned than ever before. The relationships we’ve built and the shared understanding we’ve fostered over the years give us a solid foundation from which to tackle these challenges together. The higher the stakes, the stronger our resolve—driven by a clear recognition that the future of research depends on it. We see this in the collaborative spirit behind efforts like the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA), the Global Diamond Open Access Alliance, and the Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information, and in bold innovations from publishers that challenge entrenched norms and create space for new models.

OA2020 is proud to be part of this movement—working across the community to align strategies, scale solutions, and secure a scholarly communication system that truly serves science and society.

References

16th Berlin Open Access Conference. (2023.) Final statement. https://oa2020.org/b16-conference/final-statement/

ESAC. (n.d.-a). Market watch: Country shares. Retrieved June 11, 2025, from https://esac-initiative.org/market-watch/#country_shares

ESAC. (n.d.-b). Market watch: Market shares. Retrieved June 11, 2025 from https://esac-initiative.org/market-watch/#market_shares

SANLiC. (2022). Updated negotiation principles for transformational agreements. https://sanlic.ac.za/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/SANLiC-Updated-Negotiation-principles-transformational-agreements-June-2022.pdf