The proposal converts previous subscription and Open Access spend into an institutional allocation of OA articles.

This article allocation uses a divisor of £2,049 (the PAR fee) to arrive at a number of "gratis" APCs. Participants will receive an upgrade to the 2020 RSC Gold Collection, allocation of OA articles and a discount of 15% on any further Open Access article charges. The agreement should convert around 41% more articles to open access than in 2019.

The total Jisc price for the "read" component is fixed at 2019 subscription spend plus an increase based on the package upgrade. The Jisc price of the "publish" component is fixed at the APC spend in 2018. Gratis OA articles are allocated to participants based on total 2019 subscription and 2018 APC spend.

Please send any questions arising from these documents to Chris Smith at the RSC, with cc to Anna Vernon.

To assist universities in tracking submissions, RSC commits to sending monthly reports on all articles submitted. This will allow both RSC and universities to monitor closely the quantity of funded papers going through the submissions system.

Change of option (upgrade to option 4: Unlimited Read and Publish)

Institutions initially participating in the transitional agreement can choose to upgrade to Option 4 at any time during the agreement. These changes would come into effect once the difference between the amount due in a subscription year and your quotation for option 4 in the same year has been paid.

For option 4 - unlimited read and publish institutions will be charged:

• A Reading (Content) Fee of £26,793 (number of articles behind paywall 2020)
• A Publishing Fee calculated as 60% of the average number of accepted articles from corresponding authors per institution in 2018 and 2019 x £1,600

The APC base price remains unchanged throughout and is set at £1,600 for the duration of the agreement (2020-2021). This enables the conversion to Gold OA of all accepted articles from corresponding authors, providing that a CC-BY licence is signed.

Each participating institution will be quoted the applicable fee which may be ordered via RSC option 4 - Unlimited Read and Publish. Please see the graphical information sheet for a description of the Read and Publish offer.

Backfiles or archives included

Participants will be automatically upgraded to the latest collection, RSC Gold 2020 and RSC Gold 2021.

Access is back to 2008, or to volume 1 if published later. The RSC Journals Archive 1841-2007 is available at no additional charge to participants.

Backfiles or archives separate

There is a separate agreement for the RSC Archive that covers articles from journals published in the period 1841-1996.