Other Research Support Guides 1. Plan (Design and Discover) your Research >> 2. Find & Manage Research Literature >> 3. Doing the Research >> 4. Writing up your Research >> 6. Measure Impact
Open Access Info: Click here for information about Open Access at UC
Library Open Access Fund: Click to learn about the Library Open Access Fund, which is available to help researchers pay article processing charges
A Read-and-Publish agreement is an agreement in which the publisher receives payment for reading and payment for publishing bundled into a single contract. The ‘read’ part of the agreement covers the subscriptions libraries pay so they can access closed material, and the ‘publish’ part covers APCs that authors would have paid to publish their papers as open access. This bundling together brings payment for publishing into a contractual arrangement handled by the library rather than being addressed ad hoc by individual authors who are choosing open access publishing. These agreements are 'transformative' as they seek to re-direct funds previously spent on subscription-based reading to the publishing component, often with a goal of a cost-neutral agreement in comparison with the previous subscription-based reading agreement.
| Community Publishing (e.g. PLOS) | Transformative Agreements (e.g. Microbiology Society, CSIRO, Royal Society) |
| Non-profit open access publisher | May be non-profit societies but will eventually include corporate publishing companies |
| "A community-supported model whereby members agree to share the costs of editorial and publishing services" via a community fee | Still use APCs, but builds that into the cost of subscriptions |
| Non-members will pay fees, but idea is cost is capped at cost of production | Cost of publishing versus APCs remains obscure |
| Publishing cost is distributed between corresponding and contributing authors |
American Society for Microbiology
Selected journals (S2O in 2025)
DOAJ
SCOAP3
Funds journals (Elsevier, Springer, IOP, APS, Oxford) that demonstrate a majority of high-energy physics published content. See publishing HED percentages at the title list.
When you submit as a corresponding author to any of these journals, remember to indicate that UC has a read and publish agreement.
Is the journal you're looking for not eligible? If it's fully open access (all articles open access by default) please apply to the Library Open Access Fund instead.
Some publishers have a cap on the number of APC-free publications allowed, managed by the Australian & New Zealand Universities CAUL collective. Use Reports to see manuscripts approved across the collective so far.
ACM Digital Library
All ACM Digital Library journals
American Psychological Association
Selected journals
Annual Reviews
All journals
BRILL
Selected journals
Cambridge University Press
Selected journals
CSIRO Publishing
Selected journals
Elsevier
Selected journals
Institute of Physics
Selected journals
Oxford University Press
365 Oxford University Press titles
PLOS
PLOS Biology
PLOS Medicine
Portland Press
Biochemical Journal
Bioscience Reports (fully OA)
Clinical Science
Neuronal Signaling (fully OA)
Biochemical Society Transactions
Emerging Topics in Life Sciences
Essays in Biochemistry
Royal Society
Philosophical Transactions A
Philosophical Transactions B
Proceedings A
Proceedings B
Biology Letters
Interface
Interface Focus
Notes and Records
Open Biology
Royal Society Open Science
SAGE
Selected journals
20% discount on Gold OA
Springer Nature
Selected journals
Taylor & Francis
Apply via the Library Open Access Fund if your journal appears in this list
Wiley
Selected journals
ASME
50% APC discount on all journals
15% APC discount. Corresponding author should use a Canterbury email address when publishing.
10% APC discount for any paper published in an MDPI journal. More details here. A list of MDPI journals is available here.
Please see UC Library's MDPI statement.
15% APC discount automatically applied upon acceptance of an article where the corresponding author uses their institution’s email domain.