The OA2020 Initiative was established at the 12^th Berlin Open Access conference in 2015, where thought leaders in the global Open Access movement came together to deliberate on concrete actions that would finally offer an incisive, feasible and rapid path toward an open information environment.

With the 16^th Berlin Open Access Conference, organized by the OA2020 Initiative and hosted by the Max Planck Society, participants returned to the setting where the Berlin Declaration originated. There, they discussed how to refine and renew our approaches to achieving the vision for an open information environment in the service of science and society, with a particular focus on transformative agreements.

A representative selection of leaders in scholarly publishing were invited to summarise their perspectives on the current state of the Open Access transformation in scholarly publishing and, looking ahead to the medium term, their thoughts on the opportunities and challenges for providing the best possible scholarly publishing services to researchers, in support of an open, transparent, sustainable, inclusive and globally equitable scholarly communication paradigm.