Open Access Publishing Agreements: Elsevier

The Irish Elsevier/ ScienceDirect agreement 2020-2022 was negotiated by representatives from a consortium of Irish universities, institutes of technology and TU Dublin. The agreement allows corresponding authors from member institutions to publish a proportion of articles (an estimated 71%, equating to 230 articles per year in the case of UCD) open access in over two thousand Elsevier journals without any direct publication charges. It also provides continued read-access to the Elsevier’s Freedom Collection of journals for the 19 participating institutions, including UCD. (Source: IReL).

Agreement period:  1 Jan 2023 - 31 Dec 2025.

OA quota per year: Each participating institution has been allocated a specific OA allowance each year. The allowance will cover an estimated 71% of articles by eligible authors in the relevant Elsevier journals. For UCD, this currently means a total of 265 articles per year.

If the allowance is used up, Elsevier’s editorial systems will instead offer corresponding authors the options of:

• Open Access via an Article Processing Charge invoiced to the corresponding author, or
• Traditional no-charge subscription-based publishing, where the article will be available only to subscribing readers.

Corresponding authors with articles accepted once the allocation has been used up will need to either find other sources of funding to pay the APC fee, or (if publishing in a hybrid journal), publish without a fee on the publisher site (subscription) while choosing a "Green" Open Access route by making a version of your article available through the Research Repository UCD. 

Search the Elsevier Journal Finder for this agreement, which provides details of the journals included.

When a paper has been submitted and is subsequently accepted, the corresponding author will be sent an e-mail with a link to an author publication tool. The tool offers several publishing options. If the author selects Gold Open Access as their preferred option, UCD Library will then validate their eligibility, and the article will be published open access on the journal website.

Eligible authors: The corresponding author must be affiliated with a participating institution at the time the article is accepted for publication. The corresponding author must ensure their correct affiliation details are known to the publisher. Requests to publish OA under the agreement are subject to approval by participating members.

Eligible article types: all article types.

OA publishing license: if accepted for publication in the journals included in the Agreement, the corresponding author shall be offered the option of publishing open access under a Creative Commons license (CC BY or CC BY NC ND). Authors shall retain copyright to the journal article.

Availing of the OA agreement on Elsevier's platform: 
Elsevier's Rights and Access process acknowledges only the primary institution for aligning our authors with the Open Access (OA) agreement, excluding individual departments. For instance, a more specific affiliation like "University College Dublin School of Agriculture and Food Science" will not trigger the APC (Article Processing Charge) credit option. Authors must enter "University College Dublin" as the main affiliation to ensure proper recognition and facilitate the APC credit option.

Joint press release issued by Elsevier and the Irish consortium.
Agreement between Irish higher education institutions and Elsevier.
Elsevier Author Journey - a step by step guide outlining how to publish your article open access upon acceptance.