 Welcome to everyone joining us today for this roundtable on a review of transitional agreements in the UK and considerations for the library and institutional strategies. Before we get to your questions, I'll do a brief presentation and then we'll hear from our panelists before we open it up to the floor. Maybe you should have started with introducing myself. So my name is Kier Brayman and I'm a data analyst at JISC and one of the co-authors of the recent report entitled a review of transitional agreements in the UK. I'll be highlighting some of the key findings. The report is incredibly rich, so I'll do my best to give you the highlights, but I do encourage you to read the full report if you've not already done so. The size and scope of the review is large. I do encourage you to bring a pot of tea. You might need more than just one cup, but we have deliberately structured the review, the methodology and the data so that others, including other consortia and institutions, can build on our findings. It's also JISC's ambition that the review act as an evidence base and catalyst for institutions as well as funders, consortium publishers to establish a roadmap to transition to open research and inform collective decision making and planning, which is part of why we're here today. To this end, after my review of the key findings, we'll have several panel members who've been involved in the transitional agreements oversight group or TAOG, which commissioned and reviewed the report. And they'll afterwards be speaking to how they and their institutions are responding to the findings. So you'll see we have Jeremy Upton, director of library and university collections at the University of Edinburgh. Sarah Thompson, head of content and open research at University of York. And Stephen Vitovich, head of open research and publication practice at the University of Southampton. I'll be asking our panelists some questions and then we'll be leaving lots of time for you to pose your own questions as well. I also want to extend my thanks to the team and other contributors that have worked so hard to input to the report and put it together. Before we get into the findings, I want to take a brief step back and reflect on the context of transitional agreements when they started. As is outlined in section one of the report, the context for the review is set out both from a UK and international perspective. It covers everything from the Finch report and the subsequent RC UK policy, which set a strong preference for the paid APC route in the UK. As well as discussion of lengthening embargo periods and the offsetting agreements that followed, which sought to constrain costs that would ultimately evolve into transitional agreements. TAs were adopted internationally by consortia and institutions to transition research outputs to open access while combating escalating subscription costs, OA costs and administrative overheads. To serve this purpose, JISC has negotiated and renewed 75 TAs with 47 publishers since 2016. So it's been a large movement in its own right. Our review highlights the benefits of TAs, including efficiencies, significant cost savings and high level of funder compliance during a period when realistically there were few alternatives for immediate routes to open access. For example, during the course of this study, only 32% of TA publishers offered a compliant green OA route. Although transitional agreements are not necessarily where we want them to be, the negotiation of these TAs exemplify what can be achieved by the sector by working together in concert. So in terms of our kind of first key finding, overall the UK's transition to OA has been greater and faster than the global average. In 2022, the proportion of open by which we mean hybrid and gold articles in the UK was 4% higher than globally after growing 4% faster since 2014. The transition to OA was also noted across all disciplines, including those with historically lower levels of research funding such as the arts, humanities or social sciences. TAs have also facilitated the publication of articles as open access from institutions that historically publish fewer articles. There are, however, some unintended consequences. The UK's faster transition to open is predominantly due to the greater share of hybrid articles. We have more than double the proportion of hybrid articles than the rest of the world. So in the UK there was 21% compared to 10% globally. If green articles are included, the UK's proportion of articles OA is even greater than the global proportion by 15%. While the UK appears to be transitioning to OA more effectively than the global average, there has been a steady decline in the number of UK green only articles around 4% over each of the last four years, which is a more exaggerated version of the global trend. While there is some indication of a shift to OA of TA publishers, these are relatively modest. The rapid increase in global TAs up to 2022 does not appear to have made a material impact on levels of open access with the average proportion of closed content globally in TA titles for the 38 publishers investigated being 61%. Moreover, a transition to open is slow or headed in the wrong direction. 20 out of the 38 publishers maintained or increased the proportion of their closed content in their TA titles globally from the year prior to the GISC agreement becoming active up till 2022. At the more specific levels of articles with a UK corresponding author, even still around 40% of research has remained behind a paywall for the last five years. Part of the answer to the more limited transition to open can be explained by the reach of TAs. While the TAs that we've negotiated were focused on transitioning the output of our UK members to open access, TAs are yet to make an impact beyond UK higher education and those institutions able to subscribe. So from the outer end of the circle. The dark pink ring shows any UK author. Then if you go in a level, we have any UK corresponding author. And then the third middle ring, which are those articles from corresponding authors affiliated to GISC institutions. That gap alone is quite significant representing groups generally excluded from participating in TAs. Such as researchers and health and social care settings, corporate research, etc. This indicates that more options are needed for these institutions in order to publish open access. The fourth ring shows UK corresponding authors affiliated with GISC member institutions that are subscribing with the gap. Sorry. With the gap representing where institutions did not subscribe to a relevant TA. So in some ways these could be considered missed eligible articles. Finally, the innermost ring, there were nearly 40,000 articles published under TAs. All being well, our member institution should be using the TA to publish their research open, but that is not always the case. There is a significant gap between the numbers of articles with the corresponding author at a GISC member institution. And those published under TA of approximately 22,000 articles. For a full transition to open to be achieved in a reasonable time scale, there is a need for TAs or alternatives to be scaled up. Both in terms of coverage, what is published under them, and in quantity, the number of agreements or routes. We also estimated at a journal level that titles aren't being flipped to open access at a rate that we would expect. Only three publishers fit more than 10% of the journals included in GISC TA title lists. Of the big five publishers, Wiley flipped the greatest proportion of their GISC TA titles in the five years, which was 7%. However, even at that rate, it would take at least 70 years, 70 for TA titles to flip to away. We have also examined costs and modeled costs under different scenarios to estimate cost savings and cost avoidance associated with TAs. We found that TAs constrained actual costs at a sector level. The 38 TAs examined, delivered cost savings of 16.7 million pounds in the first year compared to expenditure in the year preceding the TA for institutions that subscribed to both. Modeling costs of TAs against modeled costs of read only subscriptions plus the cost of APCs. We estimate that subscribing institutions avoided costs of 6 million pounds in 2020, increasing to 42 million pounds in 2022, and a further 49 million pounds when modeled into 2024. We've been careful to highlight that institutions may not have incurred these costs in reality. They're just modeled estimates. The longer term sustainability of an article APC based open access system is a key theme addressed within the report. Furthermore, the report also investigate that and shows that costs of TAs are still substantial and institutions stand to become increasingly reliant on open access block grants. The financial evaluation of cost effectiveness discussed does not account for the indirect cost of TAs such as administration. While the scale of OA achieved via TAs would not be possible without the dashboards and reporting developed to manage and monitor TAs overall efficiencies are still variable. Due to variations in offers, processes and systems between TAs, the evaluation and management of TAs continues to be resource intensive for institutions requiring specialized staff and financial management. Transparency on how open access publishing charges are costed and transition roadmaps remain elusive for many publishers. Most TAs publishers do not provide UK institutions or GISC with detailed expenses or revenue breakdown. For example, only nine of the 38 TAs publishers submitted data to the journal comparison service. Most publishers did not have or did not disclose an open access roadmap or definitive targets or timescales to flip journals or portfolios to open access. We have not, we have deliberately not advised on whether TAs should continue either here or in the report itself, but it is clear that TAs at least in their current form are approaching their limits. I'll hand over to Sarah now who will talk about the implications for the sector from the perspectives of the University of York. Great. Thank you very much, Kira. So as Kira mentioned at the start, I work at the University of York where I'm responsible for content and open research. And I'm also along with Jeremy and Stephen, some of the members of the GISC transitional agreements oversight group. So we've been involved in discussions around TAs and trying to analyze how they're progressing, trying to assess how publishers are moving for a few years now. And for me, the report's really helpful in crystallizing some of the things we've been talking about over that period. So I think as I've been thinking about this more, it's what the report conveys is for me is a very clear sense that TAs are entrenching hybrid open access with the biggest publishers. And they're not, as we might have expected, moving us on to new open access models, and nor are they encouraging diversity and variety in publication venues, in fact, quite the opposite. So we're just seeing more consolidation. At the same time, in UKHE, we're facing budget challenges. So my institution, among many others, we have oppressing needs to reduce our spend. And I do think this is a moment when we can be bolder. We've got no option but to make some hard choices. And put bluntly, budget reductions are probably going to mean that we at York are going to begin to withdraw from some TAs from next year. And I really do feel that we simply can't afford to wait for the biggest publishers to flip to open access entirely. We just don't have the resources to put in and wait for all that length of time. So we're therefore likely to be divesting from underperforming TAs. And I think that means that the, if you like the all you can eat buffet will be scaled back considerably York. We know it can be done, but we acknowledge it won't be easy. And I realized that for some of my colleagues in the library, it will be difficult because we take great pride in delivering excellent and streamlined services for our user communities. And this divestment is going to mean introducing more friction for our readers and authors. But we do need to be bold and take a different approach if we're going to achieve change. So alongside this divestment we are intending to protect our spend with smaller publishers and diamond models in the short term and increase it in the longer term. Alongside building capacity in our own University of Press and doing other things to encourage open such as incentivizing the creation of OERs. And really, I guess, bringing it open to the fore across both research and teaching in the institution. The GIST report also highlights that TAs entrench author behavior when it comes to choosing where to publish. I think it's so easy to publish open access when a TAs in place. So it's interesting, I think, to just pause and reflect if we're going to see authors making different choices if we take the habitual options away from them. So particularly if we see this as an opportunity to talk more about affordability and equity in our dialogue with academics about publishers, we might begin hopefully begin to see them making some different choices. I'll pass it on to Stephen now. And thank you here as well. Introduction. So at the University of Southampton, we can very much see the national picture that was just illustrated to us and through the report in our own reflected in our own institutional findings. So this is especially with respect to hybrid open access increasing and commensurate rate there being a declining green open access being the optimal way that the contents made available. And then within that a steady decline of content that's actually being archived into could achieve open access by the green route. Whilst at the same time the closed content remains steady. So that's a concern for me. And when we were asked to review the the report a while back colleagues that just asked us, you know, what are our, what are our findings from this, what do we what do we take home from it. And I basically said, well, it shows that these transitional agreements aren't transformative. Because if they're changing behavior, and that they're detracting slightly from the green open access option, which is a credible route to transition itself. And so if I sort of did a thought experiment and thought, well, if we stopped these TAs tomorrow, where would we be. And apart from the odd agreement with a publisher that we can use rise retention. And maybe some other small minor changes here and there. Ultimately, we'd be back to a position that you're in in 2018. So from my point of view, these haven't been transformative. And we need to be considering what we what we can do going forwards. There are additional problems that have been faced at the University of Southampton, mainly around the sustainability of maintaining these TAs. So what we've noticed, and I'm sure many of you in this call have noticed as well is that there's been increasing costs to the university and this is because of great proportion of the agreements as they're being renegotiated being allocated to the publishing component, which is ultimately what we wanted. But then that also means that we're incurring more VAT. And up until Wednesday, you might have thought we quite prescient if we had had this round table at the start of the conference. Up until Wednesday, we weren't able to allocate some of that expenditure back to UKRI or other funders, because they asked us to distribute the costs according to the way the publisher had calculated it. So this is creating an increased burden on institutional budgets, although those might now be relieved somewhat thankfully because UKRI have taken the action that they announced on Wednesday. The issue also is that the reason for this is that a large proportion of the authors who are benefiting from these agreements are otherwise unfunded or funded by other non-block grant providing funders. So in response to that at the University of Southampton, we've been doing some work and we've been taking the notional costs of the APCs that have been avoided in very much the same way as GIFs have. And we've gone and done currency conversions on those according to the day that they were approved on the system. And we've then used that data to create regression analysis and to calculate the fixed and the variable costs on a monthly basis so that we could project forward based on anticipated publishing across the years. And so we've been able to demonstrate a notional saving that the university is making if we have to pay for open access in many of these. And so we've been able to start making a case for a central fund at the university. We've never had a central fund before. So this is an important piece of work, which the TA principal reviewers helped us to kick off. So my other point about this is when we have a central fund because so far the way that we've been investing in TAs has been by spending the open access block grants and trying to spend those responsibly. But as we move forwards and we're using more institutional funds, we probably need to readdress what our red lines are and what our objectives are because we need to be meeting our own objectives, not just those of the funders if we're investing our own money. So my final point is as there is this market correction within the TAs and we're having the shift towards the publishing component and the increasing costs being allocated to the institutions. We might also want to think about how the open accessible grants can be repurposed because of course they can also be used for us to create platforms and infrastructure and resources to enable authors to meet the open access policies. And again, that was restated in the letter that we received from UKRI on Wednesday. So it all seems very timely. The letter from UKRI was very welcome in view of the critical review. So I very much like to go forward and think what we should be doing in the future. I'll hand over to Jeremy. Thanks Stephen and thanks colleagues and good afternoon everyone. So as part of this process we are asked to do a bit of reflection both from an individual and institutional point of view. So I'll pick up on a couple of points which have certainly been very at the forefront of my mind recently around about this conversation. I think the first thing I would say is that just to reiterate the report is a great report. One of the things I have reflected on this is I have been publicizing it widely because it really does. It has made me think differently about this even though I've been involved closely in some of the discussions in the tail group, but I have been promoting it widely to say that this is a really good source of data for to start your thinking to make you think afresh perhaps about where we're going in this kind of area. So that's my first kind of reaction, a really great positive response. But then in terms of specific things and I think the first thing I want to highlight is something which has already been mentioned a couple of times at the conference and by colleagues and that is around about equity. I was noticing it came up in the conversation around about AI accessibility and other topics. And certainly I think seeing some of the numbers which Kira highlighted in her presentation around about how far the reach has gone or actually the opposite, how limited the reach has been in some of the UK space and really are we supporting something which is bringing about some change, not just in the UK but more widely and the data kind of has made me question that more. And I think that has also then brought me back to thinking about again what Steven was saying what are we trying to achieve here and what is our goal. And one of my reflections is as a university surely we should be committed to equity in the wider sense and are these deals delivering a degree of equity. And I think I am questioning that and certainly when we come back to think again about what we want to do in the future. That is definitely something I would want us to think about more clearly, what are we trying to do in that kind of space. My next reflection really is, and I have to admit this that I think certainly locally we have failed perhaps that we haven't perhaps we have failed to engage as effectively with some of our key stakeholders, because in some ways the the deals have made some things quite easy and I think particularly thinking here particularly of our academic community. As the as the report highlights the some of the processes have been very straightforward, but in a way one of the effects of that is that we haven't seen much change in behavior. And we haven't had the need to talk and engage and explain about what's going on in the background and some of the things we want that community to engage with. And I think that is important because they are the ones who are going to eventually drive change in this space we're not going to achieve that as a library community we have to work alongside our stakeholders. So I think I could say one of my other take takeaways is to renew that to think again how do we do that better. And I think my thinking at the moment is very much about trying to reposition open access in the wider open science open scholarship space, not to talk just about open access but to recognize this is part of a much bigger and cultural change. Colleagues have already highlighted my next one which is really about taking a hard line of what good looks like there are some things here which are good there are some things which have come through in this report really, which is not good. And just that number, which highlights the rate of change just keeps coming back even though I've now seen it many times it still kind of horrifies you when you see that. And I think reflecting on some of our work in the tail group, just to be clear, yes, we have had some really good conversations with some good publishers who are really interested in exploring where we go with this. But on the other side of it, we have had some not so good conversations I think to put it politely, and therefore that just that experience backed up by the report does make me think we need to take a harder line on and work harder to understand as to what we think good looks like and what we really do want to commit. And putting up on Steven's comments about where we put our money, to be quite honest. I think leading on from that, it does make me think that there is a need to think harder about the alternatives. And I think again looking at the report, I now reflect back and think I was probably thinking quite simplistically at the start of all this that TAs may bring a kind of magic transformation which we can all buy into and it's going to solve lots of problems. And maybe the reality is I should have been more realistic about it at the start possibly. But the reality is that we are probably have a it's highlighted we the report has highlighted we have a more complex environment, different subject disciplines will may need different solutions. It's not going to be simple. And therefore I absolutely I hear Steven saying this and others that there is that need for more investment and alternatives to understand what other options might work across the board. And I think my final point of reflection is we do have to live in the real world. And maybe we need to think about how we separate out what we need to do now, and then how we can do that but still give us the energy and focus to think about where we want to go. I get a sense sometimes we get a bit caught up mixing those two up the reality is our academic communities in the next couple of years will still want access to content and we as professionals still need to work to find the best way to do that. But we should also find a way to separate that off a little bit so that we can have the energy and time to focus in really on what the bigger picture is going to look like. So that's my reflections. Thank you very much. Thanks Jeremy and thanks all. It's interesting hearing you speak and getting this kind of sense of slow disillusionment so my, my first question to the group and we'll start with you Jeremy is. Do you still believe that TAs will deliver an open access and open science world. Yeah, thank you. It's quite funny because we had a meeting yesterday in my university. Actually for the first time I had an academic on the committee you asked me this exact question which would have to put through a paper about the Wiley deal to get authorization to spend the money. And actually someone came back and I did have a moment to smile at this point, but I said it's exactly the right question to ask so we need to do that. I think as you heard from my presentation. I'm not as, you know, I don't have the same level of belief that I had when I think a couple years ago when we went into that. And I'm now much, much less certain about it. As I said, I think there have been some good things that have come out from this. And I guess I also, I started from a position where I do see publishing still as primarily a transactional activity. There is value, whatever we think of the organizations in terms of what they do. And this was really about finding a way to get better value appropriate price for what we're being delivered. But I think one of the things that has made me. Sorry, on the positive side, there are people who want to have those kind of conversations with us. So if you're asking is do they still have an opportunity to deliver with the right partners. I think there could be a chance to do that. On the other side, though, I am now more convinced there are some partners who are just really not interested how we've given every opportunity to show a level of commitment to work with this kind of model, not showing it. And I think the other thing that it's made me think is actually fundamentally do we need to work with other types of partners, and even think possibly our commercial publishers ever going to be the right kind of partners if this is the kind of model we want to develop. So Stephen, did you want to serve? Yeah, yeah. So the question was do we still believe TAs will deliver and open access our science world and I think I'm firmly in the no camp, at least not for the biggest commercial publishers for the reasons Jeremy has just been articulating so clearly. I think the report for me highlighted some publishers for whom TAs have been successful actually some smaller society publishers, and I would guess those are ones who are not overly dependent on their journal revenue and to keep the society afloat. But I think the range and scale of journals within a big publishers portfolio is just enormously varied. And it's a model based on tends to be based on per article charges that just not isn't a good fit for many journals in many disciplines. And one size definitely doesn't fit all. So I think we really need a more sustainable and affordable publishing system that needs to include a variety of business models and a mix of output types, rather than it all being just about the journal article. And even more fundamentally, as others have said, we need a more equitable publishing system that doesn't exclude so many people from participating in it and I think that last point is something for me that came out very, very strongly in the disc report as well just even in the UK. You know where you think we have the resource to put into this just so many people can't participate and benefit from TAs. So the question was, do we still believe TAs will deliver an OA or open science world? I'm on the opposite scale to Jeremy I suppose in a way because I seem to remember when I first introduced myself at the first TAOG meeting I said I don't like TAs, I don't think they're going to work, and that's why I'm here. I saw them as a dilution of plan S, the idea that a journal could flip when it reaches 50% open access for argument sake, because subscription journals have page budgets, the editors are expected to meet 100% of those page budgets. 50% OA means that you've got to in the simplest terms, create 200% of the copy you had before, and don't think that a publisher wouldn't set the page budget as high as they thought they could reasonably do so because that's directly equal to the amount that they can charge for that subscription. So in simple terms, I didn't think that they would work. And I was concerned about the undermining of the green open access Southampton has always been a green open access institution, we developed the reprint software so that's always been the party line at Southampton. And so I felt that this would undermine the progress that we've made in those respects. However, as I said in my presentation, we have had pockets of success. We've had negotiation power by having these big agreements with lots of money blazing around and strong representation from JISC and UUK. We've been able to actually approach these publishers and make demands of them that we probably wouldn't have been able to in the different circumstance. So I don't think that TAs have worked in the way that they're meant to. I don't think that they have yet transformed anything, but I think that we can be more bullish. And I think we can ask more of them. And we have the power to do so now. I also think that they've helped us understand models of negotiating with publishers, which will enable us to be stronger negotiating partners in future. And with respect to open science or open research, I also think that we should start pressing them to say what we want them to do in order to remove barriers to open research. There is an education program that publishers need to go through to educate their editors, not to reject submissions on the basis of similarity with preprints and theses. We need them to build better references to research data into their systems and better structured data for us to interrogate it and have linked data. So these are all things that we can be pressing for in future negotiations, I feel. So I think from an optimistic point of view, yes, they can in the future deliver a better world than we had in the first place, but at present we're not quite there yet. Thanks, Stephen. I think that leads nicely into the next question, which is, what changes are you considering for the immediate future? And I'll go to Sarah first on this one. Thanks, Kara. So I've already spoken a little bit about this, but due to financial pressures and were therefore highly likely to withdraw from some TAs from next year onwards. And we're also seeking to protect our financial support for non-article based models as far as practically possible. We realize that we need to do all this openly and transparently at York within our institution. And to do that, we need a vision that people can buy into. So we're going to create co-create some co-principals with our academics that will help to guide our purchasing renewal and cancellation decisions. And these will include spelling out what we continue, what we consider to be unacceptable publisher behaviors, but more positively, they'll also reaffirm our commitments to open scholarly publishing and to seeking new ways to reach that goal. So we, and importantly, we also alongside that advocacy piece with our academics, we need to make sure we've got the support of senior leaders within our institution so that they understand the direction that we're going in. This is a very complicated landscape, as we know. We need to bring them with us and we need them to help advocate for this too and to buy into this vision of the future. And none of them are going to be willing to do this alone. So, you know, it's incredibly important that we also join together these conversations happening across institutions also. Thanks. Thanks. Jeremy or Stephen, anything to add? Just that we, we've recently had some negotiations where we felt like we're a bit in between a rock and a hard place. We could have very easily walked away from some agreements that were recently reached in order to try and secure best terms in the future. And a lot of other institutions had already indicated that they would accept or maybe better word is tolerate an agreement. And so that was the rock. And the hard place was the idea of working out how we continue to support our authors and our readers and create a system where they're not going to be disadvantaged. And unfortunately, the alternative is more costly or at least equally costly, but then our authors are at a disadvantage. So we've been forced to take those agreements really, even though they don't align with our sort of principles and desired outcomes of the negotiations. So at Southampton, we are going to be readdressing what our red lines are and developing some documentation that says about when are we going to consult with our wider academic community under what circumstances would we reject an agreement under what circumstances would we feel comfortable to accept an agreement, even if it doesn't meet all of our terms. So that will hopefully help us to have those sort of thought through solid guidelines to help us with those sorts of situations in future. Yeah, just a couple of quick comments to add to that I'd agree with what colleagues say have said, I think to to build on that thing in terms of being more assertive. And I think just bring it back to the conversation today the report I think allows us to do that because it gives us a point to to say certain things have not happened. They're not working for us. If you don't make a change, and this has been shown by the report, then we're now going to not accept that. And quite honestly, we're not going to work alongside you. So I think it is about that being being more assertive. And then I'd agree the other piece about conversations and thinking about, I mean, is a challenge to get the academic community to engage with and thinking carefully. About who in the community we can work with who can help us bring about change and to me that brings us back to I think we've had more success on the open science open scholarship type conversations. And maybe there's something in there where we can build on a bit of success with those kind of conversations to try and help widen out some of the particular conversations about open access. So, I think we've started to tease out how immediate changes will kind of inevitably develop into longer term strategies but to build on that. How do we develop those longer term strategies. I think he's posted a question in the chat. Easy question. What could global open access future look like. So how do we, how do we start to figure out what the future looks like so Jeremy, I'll hand that over to you first. Yeah, I mean the honest position is if it was easy we'd have got there already. So I think actually there is something in that itself and just being more realistic and honest. I said at the start I had quite high hopes as we moved into more transitional deals that maybe that would move things forward quickly but it didn't and maybe I should have accepted that this is difficult and it is going to take time. So I think in terms of getting to a longer term strategy and fundamental is going to mean a lot of hard work. So we need to think about who has where the resources for that to take place. As with all kind of developing a strategy, we have to think carefully about what is the vision. And again, I suppose you could possibly reflect on the on the outcome of the report that maybe part of the reason we're seeing some of the things is that had we lost sight of what our vision was what were the fundamentals that we were trying to achieve. And then there's a fresh conversation about vision. Clearly, we've also touched a lot already on the whole business of working with stakeholders and you've heard my view that I think we could have done more we definitely need to go back and do more this world isn't going we aren't going to be able to change this world. I think it's highlighted that to me and we need to go back and work harder with our stakeholders. And as I say I think just being more realistic that we are in a very complex environment. There aren't simple solutions but try not to panic about that and like that to stop us experimenting looking at making perhaps having to accept that we're only going to make smaller steps forward. It's a great kind of answer to give an immediate answer as to how to do that but I think there is a degree of reality. Certainly what's come out of the report to me and as a reminder me that this is fundamentally a very complex space. Anything brief, Steven or Sarah to add to that. Yeah, I mean, as I previously said I think we need to develop red lines but I think we need to do that nationally as well I think that we could be a bit harder on publishers during negotiations and contracts discussions. If we were to commission a new university building and targets were missed the building firm wouldn't expect to get paid the full amount or their bonuses. So from that point of view I think that we need to be setting some key performance indicators and either, you know, putting punishments effectively in place or all bonuses if you want to be more positive about it, if those are met. But we have to be very careful about what those KPIs are as well because of course you don't want your lumberjack to produce millions of matchsticks you want some good quality logs. So, from that point of view, for example, I think that we need to be ensuring that eligible articles are converted. So it's not a case of say asking for them to produce more open access because then you get them commissioning more papers, and they might be of a lower quality. So it should be about converting eligible articles. In terms of Nikki's sort of elaboration on that question about what what does global picture have to look like I think it's mixed models. And I think that the communities that the platform serve will determine what those look like eventually. And I think that we need to sort of assist the publishers with identifying what those mixed models look like. Thank you. Sarah, did you want to add anything? I'll just be really quick here. So I would just say that I think we need to work together collectively on this. And that's the way that we can influence both strongly internally and influence that internal research culture piece as well. So just to give one quick example of that at York, we were able to introduce rights retention into our research publications policy relatively easily. Now that's because we weren't the very first in the UK to do that. That was thanks to Jeremy and his colleagues at Edinburgh. But also because we did it alongside other institutions within the region within the NA research partnership, that's the universities in the north research intensive universities in the north, the UK. And that enormously reassured our senior leaders. And we got there by in that way. So being able to say that we're working collectively and that we have this vision and that we know what we're going to I think will give us that strong voice and recognition to help us move this forward. Yeah, definitely a key theme from beginning to end that seems to be coming out is how the conversation needs to get bigger and include more people. So on that note, the last question I'll post to the panel before we get to the really good ones in the chat is, how do we better engage with our academics, as well as the wider research community and other stakeholders to reinvigorate these discussions. And I'll pass it to you first Steven. Thank you. So I think it's obviously contextual. The purpose of engagement needs to match the actual engagement activities so actually understanding who our stakeholders are, how we should engage with them in different circumstances is important. Certainly I want to take a more project based approach to acquisition in future. And actually do a proper stakeholder analysis. And if anyone can remember when you do that and you have your audience of keep informed, you know, keep satisfied, manage closely, etc. From that point of view, I'd like to take that approach in the future. But I mean, ultimately, with all of these agreements we're aiming to reduce friction with with publishing open access and so we need to identify where that friction is by engaging with state relevant stakeholders. But by doing that, we're also decreasing the visibility of open access. As you make things easier for people to do them, then it's going to become less visible to them, which is the double edged sword that we're dealing with where there's a decline in engagement with green open access because of how easy we're making it to engage with hybrid open access. And also, there are these sorts of contradictions with some people feeling that these kinds of agreements are being done to them. But then if you actually go out and you consult sometimes they'll turn around to you and say, well, you're the librarian, you're the expert, you tell me what we should be doing so that there are those kinds of contradictory conversations that are going on. So, ultimately, I think that we need to come up with clear guidelines on when we should be consulting with our stakeholders that we should be prepared to work with individuals when they want to work with us. But also we should just develop a sense that librarians are professionals and our experts in this area. And so we can be the experts, we can make those decisions in consultation with the academics, so that they can be left to be the experts and the professionals in their perspective areas and don't have to worry about licensing and all these kinds of things. Thanks, Stephen. Jeremy or Sarah anything you want to add. Just quick. Oh, sorry, Sarah. No, you go next. Very quick. Again, I mean I've highlighted the point about for me it's about thinking about talking about open access and other spaces and just quickly I'm aware that a number of institutions in the UK. Apart there's a result of ref are doing a lot of work around about research cultures. And there's a very active there's a very active conversation going on in our institution. It's thinking about where are the other opportunities to pick up and Steven's points that we have a professional and a knowledge which we can bring into these wider conversations. But where are these spaces where we can bring some of this conversation about this change the change the publication process etc work we bring that into that so that we can then start having a wider conversation with the people who are trying to change other aspects of research which we all know needs to happen before to open access is going to be delivered. I completely agree with with the ref being a big opportunity for for us to engage with these conversations in any way, and get get more people's attention as well as ref always brings with it that focus and that attention that maybe some other things don't. And I would just add one thing which is about recognizing our academics role and identity within their own subject disciplines. And sometimes quite often that can transcend their sense of belonging to a particular university. So I think also if we can tap into our academics involvement with societies who are publishers, and with societies who contract out publishing. If we can demonstrate our willingness to support and engage with those societies that have the greatest impact on their academic work I think that's another way that we can, we can engage our academics in this. So we'll open it up to the floor. I think we've already got lots of questions in the chat, which is great. We'll start with the first one which is for Stephen. Paul asks, as publishers seem to be offering fewer read only options. Do you have a plan to retain access to the content? No, I don't. And I don't think it's my responsibility either because we need to work collectively with this we need to work out as a sector how we can retain access to the content. As I said, Southampton has been one of the last people last institutions holding out against certain agreements recently. And we've been trying to stand our ground but other institutions have decided that the agreements are acceptable and gone ahead and in those circumstances it has always been that rock and hard play situation where it's just too costly for us to do the option or the situation has been that even if it's the same cost, there are advantages to the TAO for the alternative. I think that if we want to progress beyond the point where where where the publishers can just make an agreement just so just about okay tolerable. We need to be a lot firmer and more bullish and we need to collectively come up with plans to retain the content and to manage the publishing if we do decide to walk away from a negotiation. Can I just come in quickly so just Stephen I think hearing you talk and thinking about some of the conversations more recently you probably now are in the right place because again picking up on Sarah's point at the recent scornal content event. And when there's a show of hands in terms of the financial situation in the UK and who is expecting to see reductions almost everybody put their hand up. And I think it's great to make use of a crisis to be quite honest. So I think many institutions are going to be in this same place this is a really great opportunity for us to develop a harder line on this. So I think we could be coming back to you Stephen to, you know, get your get your thinking about how best we do that. Thanks both. We also have a question from Siobhan. What does the panel feel would be the main challenges around moving to diamond, not just in the classic sense but also in the context of open data, OERS community owned infrastructure. Anyone want to take that one. I will. I mean, I think there's necessarily a need to move to diamonds. Like, there will be in certain communities. As I say, it's about the Biblia diversity and the diversity of business models where diamond makes sense we should do diamond and we should support that. But I don't think there should necessarily be like a wholesale effort to move to diamond because these kinds of initiatives they require a lot of investment and engagement. They often require a lot of community invest investment in time and resource as well, not just financial investment. A lot of people working for free to make a success of these platforms so they need to be useful and usable and there have to be the use cases so I think diamond initiatives will come. I think that as institutions we should value things like the posi principles. I think that the Barcelona declaration, which is going to be published on 16th of April, I believe, which is about. Us investing in abstracting indexing and analytics systems which are in involving the posi principles is an important thing. So I think that it will come over time as initiatives pop up and we see the value in them. But I don't think there necessarily has to be a tremendous effort towards diamond. So I'd agree with Stevens position being an organization which is investing some some resource into diamond. It is about what we talked about earlier is going to be a mixed economy. And I absolutely have seen areas where diamond works really well and that's fine. But as Steven says, I don't think it's going to work for every area, but it doesn't. So it's just being aware of where things are effective and appropriate. And that's fine and supporting them but not to forget there are of course other models which we'll have to look at for other types of solution. Yeah, and just coming on that as a diamond. I think is really is a good counterpoint actually to the commercial publishers and the TA models so we definitely need more more diamond, more different types of organizations more community based models. This all takes time to build up. It adds complexity, but I think without that variety. We just don't have a sustainable and affordable future of scholarly publishing afraid so it's going to take more effort and more insight and more, more energy, more, more lots of things but we do need to support, try and support and keep all these poles kind of in the air. Well, and unless we do invest, I think I differ slightly from Steven I think unless we do put more effort and investment into things like diamond and take it away from the big publishers. We're not going to see any significant change so I'm actually more in favor of being a bit, a bit more radical. I know it's not easy and it's very simplistic, I know. But yeah, that's where my thinking is at the moment. So, I think you remember the last time we were all in exact agreement. The fun with this, this kind of project. I think we have time for one last question from Nikki, which is should we move from thinking of publishers as stakeholders. I was talking to a publisher on Wednesday. And I said that publishers that quite often publishers and library see libraries as the customers of publishers. But publishers are also the customers of institutions, because there is a transaction where we are providing commodity in the form of the research output for them to then sell. So publishers are our customers, as much as we are their customers if we cut the copy off to them, they wouldn't have a business model would be dead. So if you want to be radical, that's the way to do it. So, I think that, yeah, I mean, what they are stakeholders and we're stakeholders and everyone around the infrastructure stakeholders, but we have to be realistic about what the power dynamics actually are. And, and actually feel a bit more empowered to push the publishers around a little bit more. So yeah, I agree with Steven I think it is. They have an important part to play but it's about changing the nature of the relationship and as you highlighted Steven it's about where the power sits. And I think my, my answer to the question then would be, you know, they should be stakeholders but only in the way that we want them to be and if they don't want to follow those rules, then we don't want them to be stakeholders and we'll work with other people. And just to add to that I think we need to really listen to our academics value from publishers and, and which publishers they particularly value as societies and who they want to, who they want to work with who they feel are adding real, contributing to that scholarly endeavor and the future of the discipline. And those are the publishers that we really want to engage more with. We're not interested in engaging ever more with just the very big players who are interested in growing their revenues above anything else. Yeah.