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Read & Publish and Transformative Deals

If you are looking for Aston University's general open access and open research guidance, it is now located at the Library Service webpages: https://www.aston.ac.uk/library/open-research.

As part of our transformative/ read and publish deals with a range of publishers, Aston corresponding authors with current employment contracts or who are current students have access to a range of free or reduced Article Processing Charges (APCs) for original research and review articles (invited reviews, editorials, book reviews etc. are not included). Emeritus, honorary and visiting academics are not eligible for these deals.

You must select a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY licence when offered a choice by the publishers (not  CC BY-NC-ND or any other CC license) or your request will not be approved. You should use your Aston affiliation and email address and check that the journal is eligible for the publisher's free gold open access deal.

  • Eligibility is determined by corresponding author only- be sure to use your Aston email and affiliation! This is checked against the current HR staff list and student records.
  • If a publisher is not included on the list below, it means that we do not have a deal with them and any open access costs incurred will need to be met through your PASA or another funding source. If you are a UKRI grant holder, please email openaccess@aston.ac.uk to discuss APC payment options. 
  • Additional charges such as submission fees, excess page and colour charges are not included in these deals or by UKRI OA funding and will need to be covered by the author(s).

Contact openaccess@aston.ac.uk for further details on any of these schemes or author/article type/journal eligibility.

 

Discounts:

  • Royal Society: For 2023, the Royal Society is offering Aston authors a 25% discount on open access publishing fees.
  • Wiley: Wiley offers a 25% discount to Aston University corresponding authors after the yearly consortium cap has been reached.

Aston authors who wish to use either of these discounts when paying for gold open access themselves should contact openaccess@aston.ac.uk 

 

Aston University's Current Read & Publish Deals

Publisher Hybrid Journals Included Pure Gold Journals Included? New UKRI OA Policy Compliant Deal? Publisher Website Notes
ACM Yes Yes Yes ACM Publications List Incl. conference proceedings
ACS Yes Yes Yes ACS Deal Information  
AIP Yes No Yes AIP Journal Deal Info Consortium cap. Overlength JASA articles are charged $80 pp
APA Yes No Yes APA Journal List Excl. Hogrefe journals, consortium cap
CUP Yes Yes Yes CUP Journal List
De Gruyter Yes Yes Yes De Gruyter Journal List Includes gold journals from Jan 2024
Elsevier (incl. Cell & Lancet titles) Yes No, 15% Discount Yes Elsevier Deal Information
IoP Yes Yes Yes IoP Journal List Excl. The Planetary Science Journal
John Benjamins Yes Yes Yes JB Journal List
Karger Yes Yes Yes Karger Deal Information
OUP Yes Yes Yes OUP Deal Info
PLOS Complex Systems N/A Yes Yes Journal Info
PLOS Computational Biology N/A Yes Yes Journal Info
PLOS Digital Health N/A Yes Yes Journal Info
PLOS Genetics N/A Yes Yes Journal Info
PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases N/A Yes Yes Journal Info
PLOS One N/A Yes Yes Journal Info
PLOS Pathogens N/A Yes Yes Journal Info  
Microbiology Society Yes Yes Yes Microbiology Society Journal List
Portland Press Yes Yes Yes Portland Press Deal Information
RSC Yes No, 15% Discount Yes RSC Journal List Consortium cap
Sage Yes No, 20% Discount Yes SAGE Deal Information
Society for Neuroscience Yes No Yes J Neurosci Info Journal of Neuroscience (only)
SPIE Yes Yes No SPIE Journal List
Springer Yes No Yes Springer Journal Lists  
Springer: Nature portfolio
Yes  
No Yes Springer Journal Lists Consortium cap (Nature portfolio)
Taylor & Francis Yes No Yes T & F Deal Info Consortium cap, articles with APCs over £3000 capped
Wiley (incl. Hindawi & IET journals) Yes Yes Yes Wiley Deal Info  

The Excel Spreadsheet below contains a searchable list of the 11,000+ journals that Aston corresponding authors are entitled to free gold open access with from 1 January 2024. Note that some Read & Publish deals have yearly caps, and the allocation may run out before the end of the calendar year. Publishers may also add or remove titles without prior notice. Please email openaccess@aston.ac.uk if you are unsure if your article is eligible or not.