Aston has signed a number of Read & Publish deals (also referred to as "transformative" or "transitional" agreements) with a range of publishers (please see table below). These are agreements between institutions and publishers which aim to promote open access publishing, by adding the cost of article processing charges (APCs) to the cost of accessing the publishers subscription content.  

This allows Aston-affiliated corresponding authors to publish original research and review articles (invited reviews, editorials, book reviews etc. are not included) on an open access basis with the article processing charge (APC) covered by the agreement. Each agreement has it's own terms and conditions, in relation to which journals are included in an agreement. Please refer to the publisher website or contact the Open Research team for further specifics details about individual publisher agreements or journals.

• To take advantage of Aston’s agreements, the Aston-affiliated corresponding author should use their  institutional email address when corresponding with the journal, and list Aston as their affiliation in the paper to signal eligibility.
• 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 in UKRI OA funding) and will need to be covered by the author(s).

Please follow your funder’s open access policy when selecting the Creative Commons license; if your research is funded by UKRI, UKRI requires the Creative Commons Attribution CC BY licence.  If you are not UKRI funded, please note that while the REF 2029 open access policy preference is for the CC BY license, you can choose any Creative Commons license and it will meet the REF 2029 open access policy.  

Discounts:

• Royal Society: For 2025, 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.

This policy has been amended to include staff on all current Aston contracts and to include more flexibility around Creative Commons licenses (in line with REF 2029 policy) from 2025. 

Please contact the Open Research Team with any queries about routes to open access: openaccess@aston.ac.uk or see Library & Learning Services webpages: https://www.aston.ac.uk/library/open-research for further information about Open Research.