Open Access Publishing Agreements: News and Quota Updates

Discover the current open access publishing agreements in place, allowing options for publishing research open access at no cost to the author.

Key updates for 2025

New Open Access Publishing Agreement:
American Society Of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)

The new agreement with the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) is effective from April 1, 2025, to December 31, 2027.

This agreement provides current staff and students at participating institutions with access to all ASME journals (from 2000 to current) and all ASME Conference Proceedings (from 2008 to current).

Additionally, it allows authors to publish their articles in eligible ASME journals and Conference Proceedings as open access without paying an article processing charge (APC). More information here.

BMJ - this agreement has now unlimited open access quota.

Institute of Physics (IOP) - the new agreement for 2025-2027 now includes publishing in Gold journals for the first time; OA quota - unlimited.

Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) - this agreement now includes Gold (fully Open Access) RSC journals, and an unlimited APC allocation.

Optica Publishing - the renewed agreement now has unlimited APC quota.

Note for authors submitting to Elsevier and Wiley Gold (Fully Open Access) journals:

Please be aware that both the Elsevier and Wiley Open Access (OA) agreements have limited annual APC (Article Processing Charge) quotas. This means there is a risk that OA funding may no longer be available by the time the article is accepted for publication.

If funding is no longer available at the point of acceptance, the APC will have to be covered through alternative sources.

Limited annual APC quota updates

OA Agreement	APC quotas expected to run out in 2025*
IEEE	Likely to run out by the end of 2025, no exact date is available yet.
Oxford University Press (OUP)	December, 2025
American Chemical Society (ACS)	mid-August, 2025.
Springer	September 27, 2025.
Taylor and Francis	July 23, 2025.
Wiley - Hybrid (subscription) journals	Likely to run out by the end of 2025, no exact date is available yet.
Wiley - Gold (fully Oen Access) journals	Likely to run out by the end of 2025, no exact date is available yet.