Navigating open access publishing agreement caps in 2025

Posted by Dr Zachary Kendal (Scholarly Communications Specialist, Scholarly Services). Updated 30/10/2025.

Three of the University’s open access publishing agreements reached their annual article coverage caps this year: Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley. 

In this post, we explore what this means for authors and the options available to researchers at the University of Melbourne. 

Caps and their current projections 

We have 25 open access publishing agreements active in 2025, five of which are subject to annual caps. These caps limit how many articles can have their open access publishing fees covered under the agreement in a calendar year. 

As of 30 October, the following caps have been reached: 

• Wiley’s hybrid (subscription) journals on 19 September. 

• Springer Nature on 9 October. 

• Taylor & Francis on 24 October. 

• Wiley’s open access journals on 28 October. 

Our agreements with Elsevier and AIP are not projected to exhaust their caps this year.

For more information, including impacted journals, see the Library’s Open Access Publishing page and its all-covered-titles spreadsheet.

All Universities participating in these agreements through the Council of Australasian University Librarians (CAUL) contribute to the same annual caps. CAUL manages article coverage approvals on a first-come, first-served basis, gradually “spending” from the cap. CAUL tracks approval rates to project when caps are likely to be reached (see their Read & Publish Agreements Guide). 

What happens when caps are reached? 

Articles must be accepted for publication and authors must complete their author agreements before the relevant cap is reached in order to be covered.  

When an agreement’s cap is reached, no more articles can have their open access fees covered under the agreement for the remainder of the calendar year. 

These open access fees are also called Article Processing Charges (APCs). The average APC list price for articles covered under the University’s open access publishing agreements in 2024 was $5,141. 

Caps and hybrid journals

Hybrid journals are subscription journals that publish behind a paywall by default. An author can choose to publish open access for a fee or by using an open access publishing agreement (if available). They are hybrid because they end up containing a mix of paywalled and open access content. 

An article accepted to a hybrid journal after a cap is reached can be published behind a paywall to avoid an open access APC. Publishers sometimes call this “subscription only” publishing. Note that some journals levy additional fees, such as page charges, even when authors publish behind a paywall. 

The University encourages authors to deposit the peer-reviewed and revised Author Accepted Manuscripts of their paywalled articles in a repository. This repository open access pathway is free and fully compliant with copyright and publisher policies. 

University of Melbourne authors can deposit their manuscripts to our institutional repository, Minerva Access. Our repository team will check publisher policies and set embargo periods before making any files public. 

Caps and open access journals

Articles accepted to eligible fully open access journals after a cap is reached will require the payment of an APC to publish. Authors do not have the option of publishing behind a paywall in open access journals.  

Some publishers, including Elsevier, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, and Oxford University Press offer APC discounts to eligible authors publishing in their fully open access journals.  

If you are submitting to a capped open access journal, please ensure you have access to funds to pay the APC, if required. Note that the Library does not have funds available to cover APCs or other publishing fees that may arise. 

Delaying publication

Authors facing APCs sometimes ask whether they can delay completing acceptance paperwork (publishing contracts) to the new year to use the next year’s cap. 

This approach is strongly discouraged by most publishers, the University, and CAUL. In most cases, delaying signing a publishing contract will not allow use of the following year’s cap allowance. The eligibility for most agreements depends on both the date of article acceptance and the date that authors accept the publishing contract. Typically, both must fall before any annual publishing cap has been reached. 

A further reason to reconsider this delayed publishing strategy is that these capped agreements all end on 31 December 2025. We are currently unable to predict what 2026 agreements may look like, or whether the University of Melbourne will participate in the new agreements. 

What’s next for the capped open access publishing agreements?

Our multi-year capped agreements with Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, Wiley, and Elsevier all expire on 31 December 2025 and are currently being renegotiated by CAUL.

The removal of publishing caps and expansion of agreement coverage are high priorities for CAUL in these negotiations. Visit CAUL’s Major Negotiations page to find out more about this process and their guiding Agreement Principles. 

Once negotiations have been finalised, the University will evaluate offers on qualitative and financial terms before committing to uptake. University of Melbourne participation in future agreements cannot be confirmed at this stage, nor can we provide further insights into the negotiations. 

The Library’s Scholarly Communications team is regularly updating the Open Access Publishing page with notices of new and renewed 2026 agreements. Information is made available on this page as soon as possible to support researchers choosing where to publish.

Enquiries:

For enquiries relating to open access publishing, please contact your discipline’s Faculty and Liaison Librarians.