Make It Make Cents: Creating a Rubric to Evaluate Potential Read-and-Publish Agreements

Presentation Type

Presentation

Start Date

8-4-2026 2:20 PM

End Date

8-4-2026 2:50 PM

Description

Negotiating read-and-publish agreements for institutions can be tricky! There are many different aspects to consider: cost, publisher ethics, publishing data, open access discounts, etc. How do you decide which agreements to choose? What are your dealbreakers? In the summer of 2025, the License Negotiation Team from the University of Tennessee Knoxville Libraries created a rubric to evaluate potential read-and-publish agreements with vendors. The rubric allowed us to prioritize our principled negotiations approach and standardize how we approach these decisions. This presentation will demonstrate how academic libraries can create and implement rubrics to address the publishing criteria most important within their contexts. It will also cover the License Negotiation Team’s investigation of tools to track and determine the value of read-and-publish agreements. Attendees will leave with key takeaways on how rubrics can assist in library decision-making and point to potential return-on-investments.

Author Bios

Olivia Chin is the Scholarly Communication Librarian at the University of Tennessee Knoxville Libraries. She holds a Master of Library Science degree from Texas Woman’s University. Her research interests include scholarly publishing and open access, generative artificial intelligence in higher education, and library outreach and marketing. 

Luke McDonald is the Electronic Resources Librarian at the University of Tennessee Knoxville Libraries. He holds a Master of Science in Information Sciences degree from the University of Tennessee Knoxville and his research interests include digital inclusion and information gatekeeping.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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Apr 8th, 2:20 PM Apr 8th, 2:50 PM

Make It Make Cents: Creating a Rubric to Evaluate Potential Read-and-Publish Agreements

Negotiating read-and-publish agreements for institutions can be tricky! There are many different aspects to consider: cost, publisher ethics, publishing data, open access discounts, etc. How do you decide which agreements to choose? What are your dealbreakers? In the summer of 2025, the License Negotiation Team from the University of Tennessee Knoxville Libraries created a rubric to evaluate potential read-and-publish agreements with vendors. The rubric allowed us to prioritize our principled negotiations approach and standardize how we approach these decisions. This presentation will demonstrate how academic libraries can create and implement rubrics to address the publishing criteria most important within their contexts. It will also cover the License Negotiation Team’s investigation of tools to track and determine the value of read-and-publish agreements. Attendees will leave with key takeaways on how rubrics can assist in library decision-making and point to potential return-on-investments.