The latest strategy for addressing the serials crisis that has fueled the crisis in scholarly publishing across the disciplines is the establishment of transformative open access agreements.  According to the Efficiency and Standards for Article Charges initiative, Transformative agreements are contracts negotiated between institutions (libraries, national and regional consortia) and publishers that transform the business model underlying scholarly journal publishing from one based on subscriptions to one based on article processing charges (APCs) that are paid by funders, authors, or authors' their institutions.

The University of California has developed a multi-payer model that combines library contributions with grant funding when possible.  Authors without grant funding receive full financial support.  See An Introductory Guide to the UC Model Transformative Agreement to learn more.

Open access agreements with native OA publishers are intended to make an author’s choice to publish with an OA publisher an attractive and affordable option. The University of California Office of Scholarly Communication has information about the agreement basics, article payment processes, FAQs, and related resources on the agreements.