Read & Publish Open Access Agreements for 2022

Zachary Kendal, Scholarly Communications Consultant, discusses the new Read and Publish agreements allowing University of Melbourne researchers to make more of their work open access. A full list of these agreements can be found on the Open Scholarship website.

As we begin 2022, the University of Melbourne now has 13 active Read and Publish (R&P) open access (OA) agreements available to our authors. R&P agreements are a type of transformative arrangement that seeks to increase the number of OA articles published in scholarly journals, while eliminating the need for authors to pay Article Processing Charges (APCs). Under the R&P model, a single fee covers both read access to journals’ subscription content, and OA publication.

Why pursue open access publishing?

OA publishing agreements help authors get their research to policy makers, practitioners, researchers around the world, and the public without costly paywalls. Studies have indicated an OA citation advantage, with Piwowar et al. (2018) find that OA articles receive 18% more citations than average.

OA research also garners significantly more engagement on social media, news reporting, and policy documents. More pathways to OA publishing also facilitates compliance with funders’ OA requirements, including those of the ARC and NHMRC.

Am I eligible?

To be eligible for OA publishing under these agreements, the article’s corresponding author must be affiliated with the University of Melbourne and use their University email address upon submission.

Depending on the publisher, other steps may be required, so read the “How to use the agreement” section of the publisher’s entry on our website for details.

What publishers have agreements with the University of Melbourne?

Among the 13 R&P agreements currently active are several major scholarly publishers, including:

• Cambridge University Press – unlimited OA publishing in CUP’s hybrid and OA journals.
• Oxford University Press – limited (capped) OA publishing in OUP’s hybrid journals.
• Springer Nature – limited (capped) OA publishing in hybrid Springer, Palgrave, ADIS, and AJs journals (not including the Nature portfolio).
• Wiley – limited (capped) OA publishing in Wiley’s hybrid journals.

We also have R&P agreements with Brill, The Biochemical Society with Portland Press, The Company of Biologists, CSIRO Publishing, De Gruyter, The Geological Society’s Lyell Collection, Future Science Group, The Microbiology Society, and The Royal Society.

Some limits and journal exclusions may apply, so be sure to check our Open Access Publishing Agreements webpage for lists of eligible journals.

What if my final article is paywalled?

For R&P agreements with capped OA publishing, articles will be published behind a paywall once the cap is reached. In this case, you should deposit your author accepted manuscript into our institutional repository, Minerva Access, to take advantage of repository OA.

Other open access publishing agreements at the University of Melbourne

The University is continuing to explore different kinds of OA publishing agreements as we are committed to disseminating our research as widely as possible, as declared in our Principles for Open Access to Research Outputs at Melbourne. If you are a member of the University community and would like to be involved in these conversations, please get in touch with the Scholarly Communications team.

For more on the different types of OA agreements available through the University, and the APC discounts available to researchers, see our earlier blog post and the details of each agreement on the Open Scholarship website.