Some Read & Publish Agreements include a limit or 'cap' on the number of journal articles that can be published in a calendar year. This applies to the following publishers: AIP Publishing, Elsevier, Oxford University Press, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley.

Caps now exhausted

• Caps for Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis and Wiley journals have now been exhausted.
• Current agreements with Wiley and Springer Nature expire on 31 Dec 2024. Further details about 2025 agreements will be available soon.
• For Wiley's fully open access journals, if you submit after 30 Sept, you will need to pay the APC. A 10% discount is available to eligible authors

If you have an article accepted from now until the end of 2024, you have two options:

• Publish via subscription route e.g. green open access, no article processing fee (APC) is payable. The author accepted manuscript can be made publicly accessible via the UniSA Research Outputs Repository once any publisher embargo has expired.
• Pay the APC to make the article immediately open access.

There is no Library funding available to help pay Article Processing Charges (APCs).

Latest cap information

Note there is a lag of a few days with the updating of caps data in the table. The Library monitors the cap situation and provides regular updates via reports, newsletters and research committees.

Tip: Before submitting always check the journal website for any indication of how long it may take for your article to pass through the publishing process.

Journals by publisher with FoRs and journal quartiles

The Read & Publish agreement spreadsheet (available to UniSA staff and student via log in) lists journal titles by publisher and includes Field of Research and quartile information from Journal Citation Reports. This list is updated throughout the year, so refer to the latest version each time you publish, not a previously downloaded copy.

As a second step, always check the journal and publisher website to verify the latest information prior to submitting the article.

Reminder about BMC journals

Please note that although UniSA Library has a Read & Publish Agreement with SpringerNature, BMC journals are not part of the agreement, and Article Processing Charges will apply. A discount of 15% is available.

It takes time to publish!

When deciding where to publish, check the journal website for any indication of how long it generally takes for an article to pass through the publishing process.

Factor in enough time for the article to go through peer review and revisions, then promptly action your acceptance - particularly if you are publishing in a journal where a cap applies.

New guide

The Library is participating in several Read & Publish agreements with major publishers to support UniSA academics wishing to publish open access.

Please contact Ask the Library if you have any questions.

These agreements allow researchers to publish direct to Open Access with no transactional Article Processing Charges (APCs), providing more equitable access and enhancing potential research impact.

Some key points to note:

• Not all publishers offer Read & Publish Agreements, or UniSA Library may not have signed an agreement with that publisher.
• Not all journals from included publishers are eligible under these agreements. This includes Nature and BMC journal titles. With some journal/publishers, some journals may be eligible for a discount on the article processing charge.
• Each agreement has different conditions. For example, some publishers will allow unlimited submissions, whereas other publishers may set a limit that will apply across all participating universities/institutions in Australia and New Zealand.

Find other discounts on APC's

To be eligible to publish under UniSA's Read & Publish agreements, there are 3 important details:

• the corresponding author must be from University of South Australia (current staff, student or adjunct)
• the corresponding author must submit using their UniSA email address, not Gmail or other personal email
• University of South Australia should be listed as the first affiliation for the corresponding author.

Article types

Not all article types are eligible e.g., original research and reviews are usually eligible, but editorials and letters may not be. Refer to the journal website or information within the publisher links below to check.

Other charges

Page and colour image, or exceeding page length charges may still apply, and need to be paid by the researcher. Check on the journal website for further information.

When covered by a Read & Publish agreement, journal articles are published as open access under a Creative Commons license.

For some publishers (for example Elsevier) the default, preselected license in the article submission workflow is CC BY, which is the most open license for sharing and re-use. For any NHMRC funded research, CC BY must be used, as per their Open Access Policy.

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