Several Open Access publishing agreements approach their cap

EUR Library has many agreements in place with several academic publishers. These agreements allow corresponding authors affiliated with EUR and EMC to publish their peer-reviewed journal articles open access, at no additional cost. Some of these agreements, however, include a limited number of articles (also referred to as a ‘cap’). 

Projections indicate that these limits will be reached for certain agreements before the end of the year. It is expected that the cap for articles published with Springer and Oxford University Press (hybrid journals only) will be reached in September. By October, estimates suggest that the limit will be reached for Emerald, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LLW), and Oxford University Press (full open access, gold journals).

Once this limit is met, authors will no longer be able to publish under the agreement without incurring in additional costs. To stay informed about the status of the cap of the publisher's agreements, you may sign up for a ‘notify-me service’. If your manuscript is accepted between the cap being reached and January 1, 2027, the publishers will still offer the possibility to publish Open Access, but the Article Processing Charges will not be covered by the agreements and will need to be covered by the author. If faced with this situation, and lack the funds to cover these costs, the best alternative is to choose to publish under ‘closed-access’ and use our Open Access Regulation to share your article in your institutional repository after a six-month embargo period. 

However, please note that this option, also known as the Taverne route, is not sufficient to meet the Open Access requirements of Plan S-affiliated funders such as NWO and ERC. Such funders require research output to be made open immediately. If this applies to you, we advise you to contact the EUR Library Open Access team.