Overview - This Read and Publish agreement covers all Article Processing Charges (APCs), for corresponding authors affiliated with participating SCELC institutions in fully Open Access Cambridge journals and subscription-based journals that offer hybrid Open Access. Articles submitted by eligible corresponding authors qualify for Open Access publishing under this agreement based on the date the article is accepted for publication, on or after 1 January 2021 (or 2022) through to 31 December 2024 (depending on start date).
Which SCELC institutions are covered? Twenty-seven institutions are participating in the SCELC Cambridge Transformative agreement. Half of the institutions started in 2021 and the other half started in 2022. See the participating institutions page for a list by start year.
Which journals are covered?
This agreement secures reading and post-cancellation access to the full package of controlled access Cambridge journals (360 titles in 2022) and provides OA publishing support for an additional 45 gold open access journals. Publishing rights are guaranteed to all 386 hybrid and gold OA journals, leaving just 19 titles that do not yet support standard OA publication. The link from the participating journals page can be filtered to list journals available for open article publication under this agreement.
Which article types qualify for Open Publication? All original research articles qualify including research articles, review articles, rapid communications, brief reports and case reports. Book reviews, discussions, editorials, introductions, letters, meeting reports and proceedings are not covered under transformative agreements. See the Cambridge article type definitions for more detail.
How will corresponding authors from my institution learn that they’re eligible to publish open access at no charge to them? When a corresponding author submits their article, they enter their affiliation details into the submission system. Details in the 'affiliation string' that are necessary to identify eligibility include their institutional affiliation and email domain. Once the article is accepted, their affiliation string is automatically assigned a Grid ID/ROR . When it matches to an institution participating in the SCELC agreement, they are offered Open Access publishing at no charge. Author's can also use Cambridge's waivers and discounts page to confirm their eligibility ahead of time and view a list of journals covered by the agreement.
Do my institution's authors have a choice as to whether to publish their qualifying article open access? Yes, authors may choose to opt-out of publishing their qualifying article open access, even though there would be no charge to them. Authors may also order open access retroactively. Cambridge runs regular campaigns to invite qualifying article's authors to do so free of charge.
Which open access license options are available? Typically, authors may choose among six Creative Commons Licenses: CC-BY, CC-BY-SA, CC-BY-ND, CC-BY-NC, CC-BY-NC-SA and CC-BY-NC-ND. Types in bold were selected by SCELC institution affiliated authors in 2021. Please see Cambridge's Creative Commons Licenses page for more detail.
Does my institution need to approve the articles that our institution's authors publish openly under the agreement? No. Most (if not all) of our institutions have logged in to RightsLink Agreement Manager during their initial setup to turn automatic approvals ON. See minute 20 of the Publishing Workflow Video. According to the video, this needs to be set to automatic approval for each new year of the agreement.
Will my library be charged an additional fee based on the number of open access articles my institution's corresponding authors publish under the agreement? No, the cost of open publishing of qualifying articles is covered by your subscription fee.
Will my institution's corresponding authors be asked to use available grant funding to pay for open publication of qualifying articles? No. Publication support from grant funding is not requested in this agreement.
Is there a limit to the number of articles that can be published open access under this agreement?
No. This is an uncapped agreement for all current participants, so there is no limit on the number of articles that can be published open by eligible corresponding authors in eligible journals.
How can my institution/library see how many of our author’s papers have been Openly Published under this agreement? Your RightsLink profile can be set to deliver regular publication reports and they are also available on demand. Please email jason@scelc.org with any questions.