The University of California announced two new open access publishing agreements today. The first supports open access publishing with the technical professional organization IEEE, which is among the largest publishers of UC research. The other is an extension of UC’s 2020 agreement with Springer Nature that adds funding support for open access publishing in the prestigious Nature journals; previously only titles in the Springer portfolio were eligible.

About the agreement with IEEE

The four-year agreement with IEEE, effective July 15, 2022 through December 31, 2025, enables UC corresponding authors to publish open access in all IEEE journals, regardless of whether they have research funds available to pay for open access publishing or not.

Authors who have research funds available for open access publishing will pay their own open access fee (known as an article processing charge, or APC). For authors who do not have sufficient funds available to pay the APC, the UC libraries will cover the full cost on their behalf, ensuring that lack of research funds does not present a barrier for UC authors who wish to publish open access in IEEE journals. The agreement also covers overlength page charges for all UC authors regardless of how they choose to publish with IEEE.

The deal also provides UC scholars with reading access to over five million documents from the IEEE Xplore Digital Library, including scientific journals, proceedings, and standards.

For details, see the IEEE agreement FAQ on the UC Office of Scholarly Communication website.

About the agreement with Nature

Beginning August 1, 2022, the UC libraries will automatically pay the first $1,000 of the APC for UC corresponding authors who choose to publish open access in the Nature portfolio of journals, including Nature, the Nature research journals, Nature Communications and Scientific Reports.

The remainder due on each APC for publishing in these journals must be covered by the authors themselves, utilizing research funds available to them. Authors without research funds to pay the remainder of the APC may publish their articles on a subscription basis.

UC authors publishing open access in Springer Nature’s other journals (including Adis, Biomed Central, Palgrave Macmillan, Springer, Springer Open, and hybrid Academic journals on Nature.com) will continue to receive the UC libraries’ automatic $1,000 contribution, as well as the option for full coverage of the APC if they lack research funds for publication.

All aspects of the 2020 Springer Nature agreement, including UC’s reading access to all currently licensed Springer Nature journals, will continue through December 31, 2024.

For details, see the Springer Nature agreement FAQ on the UC Office of Scholarly Communication website.

UC has now secured more than a dozen open access agreements with various publishers, a notable milestone in the University’s effort to make it easier and more affordable for its authors to publish open access. Open access publishing, which makes UC research freely available to the public, is central to UC’s mission as a public university.