China
Africa
Summary
Taylor & Francis is committed to enabling sustainable open research initiatives that lead to more open scholarly communications. We will find an appropriate open home for any research based on sound science that is submitted to us.
We will focus on routes to open access that recognize the value that publishers add to the research communication ecosystem. As with any commercial undertaking or enterprise, publishers must be compensated for the services we provide.
A successful open research ecosystem requires a variety of approaches and the acceptance that not all disciplines will move towards this goal at the same speed.
We commit to working collaboratively and creatively with funders, institutions, researchers and policymakers to drive a sustainable shift towards open research.
Our contributions so far
- A range of Open Access (OA) publishing options for over 95% of our journals, 280 fully OA journals and our ongoing conversion commitment. This has led to 115 journals being converted from subscription to OA since 2012, with a further 7 currently converting for their 2024 volumes. 20% of the articles we published in 2020 were OA (this number is growing, by more than 50% annually).
- More than 25 transformative agreements serving over 600 institutions, publishing over 21,000 OA articles in 2021-22.
- Open research platforms and gateways from F1000 for major research funders and organizations worldwide including the European Commission, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and others, providing a route to support their researchers in adhering to open research principles and make their research outcomes available sooner to a global audience.
- Supporting good open research practice, as evidenced through clear and progressive data sharing policies, training and support for researchers, and participation in industry groups such as the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA).
- Providing flexible options for OA books, such as our Open Books Archive and our archiving policy. We have published 570 OA books, and have made a further 186 chapters OA.
Progression towards Open Access
Progress towards OA in scholarly communications is happening at different speeds, but we will move ambitiously and as quickly as the market dictates. We will aim to match what we publish by geography and subject area to the available funding. Our goal is to achieve what authors need and what funders require, even if it is not always possible to have the same speed and rate of OA take up across all disciplines.
We have introduced Choose Open which is a growing range of cost-effective open choices for the research community on how content is accessed, shared and discovered. These include F1000’s publishing gateways and platforms, an extensive range of hybrid and full OA journals, and OA books. Choose Open is underpinned by our ongoing commitment to libraries, consortia, scholarly societies and funders to develop innovative options to address their OA needs, alongside a commitment to be proactive advocates of an open future.
Our positions on Open issues
Gold Open Access
The road to Open allows us to focus on Gold OA to the version of record. This is a sustainable solution where users can be confident that the final published article that we have helped to produce will exist in perpetuity.
- We will focus on the definitive version of record and devise solutions to make access open to this version which we have helped create, validate, enrich and curate. This might be via Gold OA, through read and publish deals, innovative platforms and gateways, or something else: we are constantly and actively exploring new options.
- We publish all Gold OA book content immediately, without embargo.
- We permit posting of Accepted Manuscripts (AM) under embargo periods of 12 months for STM journals and 18 months for HSS journals to support preservation and institutional repositories.
- Green Open Access is not sustainable and relies on a healthy, functioning subscription model. Zero embargo Green OA runs counter to long-term aspirations to open up research outputs.
Hybrid journals
Progress towards Open happens at different speeds, using different approaches. We will continue to operate in a mixed model environment for some time, especially in HSS. We encourage authors to take an Open route to publication and offer them the support to do so.
- We advocate OA vocally and ambitiously. In some circumstances and for some disciplines, mixed funding models will remain. In HSS, the challenges around establishing full OA venues are considerable. This is due to the nature, size, and selectivity of typical HSS journals and compounded by the funding methods available for these disciplines.
- OA content on our platform has greater impact than content behind a paywall – this also applies to open access articles in hybrid journals ¹. Where full OA is not currently viable, hybrid OA is an important option to offer to sustain research quality, especially in HSS disciplines.
- As open access material increases in hybrid journals, we review the cost of the subscription and reflect pricing through our global offset policy approach.
Rights and licensing
We wholeheartedly support the aims of funders and policy makers to deliver immediate open access.
- We believe the definitive version of record, which publishers have helped to create, validate, enrich and curate, is the best way forward to ensure the accuracy and longevity of the scholarly record. We will continue to develop routes to open access for this version in partnership with all stakeholders.
- Policies that do not provide funded, sustainable routes to open access will not work. We will retain embargoes on Accepted Manuscript posting where we have them.
Open Research
OA is a key aspect of open research which we value as part of a broader open research agenda. We have established four open research indicators against which we have set targets and will monitor progress over the next five years through to 2025:
- Establishing funder-compliant Open publication pathways to meet the needs of all HSS authors through pilots, partnerships, and F1000.
- Proactively using transformative agreements for consortia globally, paving the way to move to full OA.
- Actively driving data sharing: all in-house journals are on a data sharing policy, aiming for over 10% on a proactively open data policy (Publicly Available, Open, Open & FAIR).
Call to action
Taylor & Francis believes that Open Research is the best way to amplify and communicate research in order to deliver change that improves lives.
To achieve an Open future, we will continue to work closely and collaboratively with research institutions, scholarly societies, funders and policymakers. In addition to adequate funding, we must allow for innovative models and must accommodate both fast-moving disciplines and those that are not.
We will commit to ensuring that every researcher has relevant and realistic options available to them to publish their work, so that no researcher is left without a voice, regardless of funding source.
Our position on open access pricing
We are transparent in our approach to setting open access article and book publishing charges and the sales deals we make with organizations that include open access elements.