What are open access agreements?

Have you ever been through the publishing process and found out that your institution already has your open access costs covered?

If you have, it is likely that you have encountered an open access agreement before!

Open access agreements cover Article Processing Charges (in full or partially) on behalf of authors. They are usually negotiated by the author's affiliated institution, or sometimes funders, which is a fantastic deal for authors who need to publish OA and who want to make their research widely available!

OA agreements are often called 'read & publish, publish & read, transitional, transformative agreement.' 

Some agreements cover all publishing, others are limited to a quota (max number of articles per year) or only cover certain article types.

How do you know if an agreement applies to you? Before submitting, authors can, for instance, use the Journal Checker Tool to see if there’s an agreement in place and if it’s funder compliant. Check information on university or publisher websites. At the American Chemical Society (ACS), authors can use the ACS ChronosHub Journal Finder to find out if they are eligible for an agreement.

During the submission process, depending on the publisher and their submission system, you should get an alert. Often these are triggered by the affiliation of the corresponding author. This can be detected by their institutional email, so make sure these details are entered correctly. 

Watch our webinar: What Do Open Access Agreements Entail?