Research Guides: Author Services: Vanderbilt’s Agreements Supporting Open Access Publishing

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Publishing Your Work Open Access

To better support open access publishing for Vanderbilt authors, the Jean & Alexander Heard Libraries has negotiated agreements with several publishers which waive or discount the article processing charge (APC), reducing the barrier to publish OA. Each agreement varies in terms of included journals, article content types, and the number of articles are covered annually. Check the publisher tab for additional details.

Instructions for Authors:

Only articles by a Vanderbilt-affiliated corresponding author will be eligible.
To ensure that publishers match authors with agreements, corresponding authors must use a Vanderbilt or VUMC email address and should select Vanderbilt University as the affiliated institution.
Articles must be accepted during the term of the agreement.
Color, image, or page fees are not covered and remain the author's responsibility.
Articles are published under a Creative Commons license. Type offered will vary by journal and funding agency requirements.
Each publisher has a unique list of eligible journals. Check the journal finder on this page or the publisher page for additional information.
Certain agreements have a limited number of covered articles. Articles accepted after this number is reached can be published OA through self-funding.

For help or to schedule a research consultation, please Ask a Librarian.

AIP Publishing

AIP Publishing Hybrid Journals
Vanderbilt's agreement with AIP commenced January 1, 2024 and waives the APC for articles published open access in hybrid journals. APCs are waived until the open access tokens allotted for the year have been claimed.

American Chemical Society

Vanderbilt's ACS Agreement Page
Vanderbilt's agreement began on January 1, 2024 and includes open access publishing in all journals (see note regarding partner journals). Final published articles are sent for deposit in PubMed Central, which is automatically mirrored on Europe PMC. Authors publishing open access under this agreement are also free to deposit the version of record in their institutional and/or research funder’s designated open access repository.

There are currently four ACS OA Partner Journals that have been excluded from all read and publish agreements because the APC is either being covered by the journal or authors may apply for an APC waiver. These journals are currently excluded in order to prevent tokens being redeemed for a sponsored APC. Please see below for details regarding the four journals:

Chemical & Biomedical Imaging - APCs for manuscripts submitted by December 31, 2025 are covered by the journal if they are accepted after peer review.
Environment & Health - Authors who submit their manuscripts by December 31, 2025 may apply for an APC waiver if their paper is accepted after peer review.
Precision Chemistry - APCs for manuscripts submitted by December 31, 2025 are covered by the journal if they are accepted after peer review.
Chem & Bio Engineering - APCs for manuscripts accepted by January 31, 2025 are covered by the journal.

Annual Reviews

Annul Reviews Subscribe to Open Information
Vanderbilt participates in the Subscribe to Open (S2O) program, which relies on sufficient institutional subscriptions to convert gated journals to open access volume-by-volume. If enough libraries continue to subscribe to a journal at a level to sustain its operational costs, the current year’s volume becomes open access. If there is not enough support, then the traditional paywall is maintained.

Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Vanderbilt's agreement waives the article processing charges (APCs) for an unlimited number of articles by Vanderbilt-affiliated corresponding authors. The following article types in any ACM publication (i.e. - journals, magazines, conference proceedings, etc), are included.
• Research article
• Short paper
• Technical Note / Editorial Note / Note
• Tutorial
• Case Study
• Interview
• Review Article
• Survey Article

BioMed Central (BMC)

BioMed Central Journal Title List
Vanderbilt's agreement provides a 15% discount off article processing charges (APCs), which vary by journal. Visit a journal's homepage to find the APC.

BMJ

BMJ Author Page
Agreement includes publishing in all journals with the exception of Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin.

BMJ Case Reports

Access BMJ Case Reports
Vanderbilt's agreement waives fees to publish open access, but authors must provide the institution's fellowship code. To get the code, the corresponding author will need to send a request here to the Eskind Biomedical Library.
BMJ Case Reports User Guide Instructions

Cambridge University Press

Vanderbilt's Cambridge Agreement Page
Agreement includes both gold and hybrid journals. Eligible article types are research articles, review articles, rapid communications, brief reports, and case reports. This agreement does not cover the Prisms/Research Directions titles which launched in 2024.
Open Access Waivers and Discounts
To view included journals, select United States and then Vanderbilt University.

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Journal Title List
Vanderbilt's agreement covers the article processing charges (APCs) for open access publishing in both gold and hybrid journals.

The Company of Biologists

The Company of Biologists Journal Title List
Vanderbilt's agreement includes read access to all content and covers the APC for open access publishing in all journals. Includes article deposit in PubMed Central by CoB on the author's behalf.

Elsevier Hybrid Journals

Vanderbilt's Elsevier Agreement Page
Vanderbilt's agreement began on January 1, 2024 and waives the article processing charge (APC) for articles published open access in hybrid journals. APCs are waived until the open access tokens for the year have been claimed.

Included Article Types: Case Reports, Data in Briefs, Full-length articles, Micro-articles, Original software publication, Practice guidelines, Protocols, Review articles, Replication studies, Short communications, Short surveys, Video articles.

Chrome is the preferred browser for the Elsevier author interface.

Future Science

Future Science Journal Title List
Vanderbilt's agreement began on January 1, 2024 and waives the article processing charge (APC) for articles published open access in all journals.

Future Medicine

Future Medicine Journal Title List
Vanderbilt's agreement began on January 1, 2024 and waives the article processing charge (APC) for articles published open access in all journals.

IEEE

IEEE
Vanderbilt's agreement with IEEE commences on January 1, 2024 and waives the article processing charges (APCs) for articles published open access on a first come, first served basis for the first 25 articles. Articles are published under a Creative Commons license.

Institute of Physics (IOP)

IOP Journal Title List
Vanderbilt's agreement includes all journals in List A, B, C, and D. Some journals charge fees (e.g. image and page charges) that are not covered by this agreement. The author is responsible for paying those fees. Eligible article types are research papers, review articles, special issue papers, and letters.
A Guide to Submitting Under a Transformative Agreement
Visit this website for detailed instructions on submitting a manuscript.

Microbiology Society

Microbiology Society Journal Title List
Vanderbilt's agreement began on January 1, 2024 and includes open access publishing in all journals.

Oxford University Press Hybrid Journals

Oxford University Press Agreements
Vanderbilt's agreement waives the article processing charge (APC) for articles published open access in hybrid journals and received into OUP production on or after January 1, 2024. Articles are published under a Creative Commons license.

Included article types are research article, review article, case report or brief report.

Eligible corresponding authors publishing in participating fully OA journals will receive a discount on their APC.

PLOS

PLOS Journal Title List
Vanderbilt's agreement includes open access publishing in all journals. Final published articles are sent for deposit in PubMed Central by PLOS on behalf of the author.
Submitting to PLOS for APC-free publishing
Watch this brief video tutorial on how to submit a manuscript and select APC-free publishing:.

Royal Society

Royal Society Journal Title List
Vanderbilt's agreement covers the article processing charges (APCs) for open access publishing. Where applicable, open access articles are deposited in PubMed Central by Royal Society on the author’s behalf. If authors do not provide details to identify their eligibility at submission, they are not guaranteed to be identified as eligible to publish open access under this agreement.

Royal Society of Chemistry

Royal Society of Chemistry Journal Title List
Vanderbilt's agreement covers the article processing charges (APCs) for open access publishing in both gold and hybrid journals. Eligible authors can decline the open access offer and publish under the traditional subscription model instead. If authors do not provide details to identify their eligibility at submission, they are not guaranteed to be identified as eligible to publish open access under this agreement.

If an author decides to convert an article to OA later and within the allowed time period offered by the publisher, they may complete the following application form to choose a CC BY or CC BY-NC license, https://www.rsc.org/journals-books-databases/open-access/open-access-info/voucher-open-access-application/ . Please enter ‘Au-000000’ as your voucher code.

S Karger

S Karger Journal Title List
Vanderbilt's agreement began on January 1, 2024 and includes open access publishing in all journals.

SAGE

Sage Journal Title List
Vanderbilt's agreement waives the article processing charges (APCs) for open access publishing.

Upon article acceptance, the corresponding author will receive an email from openaccess@sagepub.com with a subject line of ‘Choose the publication route for your article 10.XXXX/XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX’. The corresponding author will have fourteen days to digitally sign the Open Access license. If the license is not signed, then the article will be published in the traditional subscription only format.

All SAGE journals with the exception of those listed below are included in this agreement:

Abstracts in Anthropology
British Journalism Review
Current Bibliography on African Affairs
Index on Censorship
InnovAiT
International Political Science Abstracts
Journal of the ICRU
Pain News
Phi Delta Kappan
Political Insight
All Journals of iMechE
All Journals of the Royal Society of Medicine

SCOAP3

SCOAP3 Journal Author Guidelines
Vanderbilt's membership supports article processing charges (APCs) for open access publishing in all SCOAP3 journals. SCOAP3 covers the APC for all articles published in the following journals: The European Physical Journal C (EPJC); The Journal of High Energy Physics (JHEP); Nuclear Physics B (NPB); Physics Letters B (PLB).

SCOAP3 covers the APC for only high energy physics articles published in the following journals: Acta Physica Polonica B (APPB); Advances in High Energy Physics (AHEP); Chinese Physics C (CPC); Physical Review C (PRC); Physical Review D (PRD); Physical Review Letters (PRL); Progress of Theoretical and Experimental Physics (PTEP).

Taylor & Francis

Vanderbilt's Taylor and Francis (T&F) Agreement Page
Vanderbilt's agreement began on January 1, 2024 and waives the article processing charges (APCs) for a set number of articles published open access on a first come, first served basis in most T&F journals. See the list of excluded titles.

If the journal has additional costs, such as page charges or color charges, these fees will still apply and will not be covered by the agreement.

The article must be an original research article. Other types of articles such as Editorials, Announcements, and Book Reviews, are not covered by this open access publishing agreement.

Authors must accept the waiver during the article acceptance process. In some cases, an eligible article may be converted to open access after publication. Please submit an Ask a Librarian ticket for instructions.

Wiley and Hindawi

Wiley and Hindawi Author Page and Journal Finder
Vanderbilt's agreement began on January 1, 2024 and waives the article processing charge (APC) for articles published open access. The APC is waived until the open access tokens for the year run out. Articles are published under a Creative Commons license. Check for more details on a journal's homepage under About, Open Access.

Approved article types: Case Study, Commentary, Data Article, Education, Lecture, Method and Protocol, Perspective, Practice and Policy, Rapid Publication, Research Article, Review Article, Short Communication, Technical Note

Eligible Authors will be able to select from the following Creative Commons licenses, as applicable for the particular journal:
Attribution International (CC BY), Attribution Non-Commercial International (CC BY-NC), Attribution No-Derivatives International (CC BY-ND), or Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivatives International (CC BY-NC-ND). The publication workflow will, whenever possible, direct Eligible Authors to CC BY as the first option if permitted by the applicable journal and its policies.