Open Access Agreements
Our transformative Read & Publish agreements
(Last updated: 6 October 2025)
This information concerns journal articles. Elsewhere you can find information about OA (articles in) books .
Green OA/Self-archiving
Information on which versions can be self-archived in repositories is provided on our Author's Rights Page .
Gold OA through individual (author) APCs
Most of our journals are, at present, hybrid. We offer authors the option to make their article Open Access through payment of an APC .
Transformative Read & Publish Agreements
We have started to arrange "Read & Publish" deals with institutions with the purpose to transform our journals into OA journals. Here you'll find an up-to-date list of agreements . We are proud to announce that we have agreements with several consortia .
Institutions interested in discussing a Read & Publish agreement can contact us at openaccessbenjamins.nl.
Read & Publish offer
We developed our R&P offer on the basis of the 'Smooth Transition Model' which was proposed by Nina Schönfelder (University of Bielefeld). For background information:
- Schönfelder, N. (2020). Proposal for a new model of transformative agreements: A smooth transition from subscriptions to APCs. Discussion Paper, Bielefeld.
- UKSG 2022 presentation we did together with Nina Schönfelder : slides (PDF) / video-recording
The model is based on a single, transparent calculation that balances the subscription fees, APCs, and an offset for the total amount of Open Access journal articles, to establish a gradual shift using the offset as a pivot.
Example quotation for Institution X in the September 2025 for subscription year 2026:
- Institution X has 20 subscriptions at subscription fees of € 5000 in total, according to the 2025 list prices
- On average over the preceding five full years (2020-2024), corresponding authors from Institution X have published 4 articles per year in any of the Benjamins journals (not limited to the subscribed journals).
- JB Open Access factor: in 2024, 22% of all JB journal articles were Open Access
- APC is € 1800
| Read fee: | € 5000 x (1 – 0.23 ) | = € | 3850 |
| Publish fee: | € 1800 x 4 x 0.23 | = € | 1656 |
| ____________ + | |||
| R&P fee: | = € | 5506 |
Advantages of this model
- Fits with subscription renewal process
- No cap on published OA journal articles per year
- Built-in offset for participating institutions
- Transparent: the same formula for all agreements, based on known publication and subscription data
- Corresponding authors only need to ensure they include their correct affiliation; when the article enters the production process, we will check automatically whether any of the R&P deals applies
- Librarians/institutional OA officers do not need to approve each article (but this can be set up if desired)
Author workflow FAQ
See also this FAQ.
Reporting
John Benjamins participates in the OA Switchboard , founded by OASPA in 2020, providing community-based infrastructure to streamline communication and facilitate reporting between publishers and institutions on OA publication-level information.
