January 29, 2024

The Drexel University Libraries is pleased to announce six new transformative open access (OA) agreements aimed at supporting Drexel research and lowering the cost of open access publishing for the University’s authors.

Under these publishing agreements (also known as “Read and Publish agreements”), Drexel corresponding authors can publish their research as open access (OA) in eligible journals for free—without the need to pay article processing charges (APCs). In addition, these agreements add reading access to more than 3,500 journals from the publishers’ portfolios for the Drexel community. These agreements will also help to expand the reach and visibility of Drexel-published research and increase equity by reducing barriers for readers worldwide to access Drexel scholarship.

To date, the Libraries has negotiated transformative agreements with Elsevier, The Royal Society of Chemistry, Springer Nature, Company of Biologists, Association of Computing Machinery, and the Institute of Physics.

Each agreement is individually negotiated by the Drexel Libraries or its consortial partners and reflects the unique journal portfolios of each publisher. Note that these agreements cover many but not all journals from each publishing partner. Springer Nature, for example, publishes over 3,000 academic journals and thousands of books annually. APC savings based on Springer Nature journals alone are estimated to be over $300,000 annually.

Authors must adhere to specific rules to take advantage of these agreements. Information regarding article eligibility, including what defines a corresponding author, are available at the Libraries’ Open Access Publishing resource guide. Publishing information—including lists of journals covered by each agreement—and author instructions are provided for each participating publisher.

For more information about Open Access and the Libraries’ transformative publishing agreements, contact libsystems@drexel.edu.