Jisc has today launched a significant new report about open access publishing – a review of transitional agreements in the UK. It contains data and analysis about the proportion of research (both UK and global) which is available as open access, and considers the extent to which transitional agreements have played a part in this.

The report finds that half of UK-authored research articles are now published as gold open access, and transformative agreements have helped push up this number. However, the agreements are not translating to a quick conversion of publishers’ journal portfolios to be fully open access, so they are not effectively bringing us close to a paywall-free publishing system.