Skip to Main Content

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.

Aston has signed a number of read and publish deals with a range of publishers (please see table below). These agreements allow Aston-affiliated corresponding authors with current contracts or who are current students 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. Terms vary for each of these agreements  so please refer to the publisher website or contact the Open Research team for further specifics details about individual publisher agreements or journals.

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 licenceIf 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.  

  • 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).

 

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

 

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. 

 

Aston University's Current Read & Publish Deals

Publisher Hybrid Journals Included Pure Gold OA Journals Included? New UKRI OA Policy Compliant Deal? Publisher Website Notes
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Yes Yes Yes ACM Publications List Incl. conference proceedings
American Chemical Society (ACS) Yes Yes Yes ACS Deal Information  
American Institute of Physics (AIP) Yes No Yes AIP Journal Deal Info Consortium cap. Overlength JASA articles are charged $80 pp

American Psychological Association (APA)

Yes No Yes APA Journal list Excl. Hogrefe journals, consortium cap
Cambridge University Press (CUP) Yes Yes Yes CUP / Cambridge Core Journal Eligibility Checker
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 Select CC BY license even though Elsevier labels it 'commercial'
Institute of Physics (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
Microbiology Society Yes Yes Yes Microbiology Society Journal List  
Oxford University Press (OUP) Yes Yes Yes OUP Deal Info
Public Library of Science (PLOS) N/A Yes Yes PLOS Deal Info
Portland Press Yes Yes Yes Portland Press Deal Information

Royal Society of Chemistry (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 Society for Neurosci Info Journal of Neuroscience (only)
SPIE (formerly Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers) Yes Yes No SPIE Journal List
Springer Yes No, 15% Discount Yes Springer Journal Lists  
Springer: Nature portfolio
Yes  
No, 15% Discount Yes Springer Journal Lists Consortium cap (Nature portfolio)
Taylor & Francis Yes Yes Yes T & F Deal Info F1000 Research incl.; Consortium cap; APC cap over £3000
Wiley (incl. 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 2025. 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.