Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, if he will hold discussions with universities on the value for money of their contracts with academic publishers for (a) journal subscriptions and (b) open-access publishing.

Jisc is an independent nonprofit company that supports universities with the transition to open access. It does this through negotiating a range of transitional open access agreements and institutional access to journal publications. These agreements enable UK research output to be published open access in accordance with UK funder policies.

Jisc will negotiate new agreements with publishers on behalf of the sector in 2025. This will focus on pace of change to open access models, the financial sustainability of agreements, and equity to enable a wider audience to benefit including researchers, small specialist institutions and public health organisations.