Free Open Access Publishing Opportunities for Azusa Pacific University Authors

Azusa Pacific University, as a member of the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC), is part of a read-and-publish pilot agreement with Elsevier beginning February 2024 through December 2027. This agreement allows Azusa Pacific-affiliated authors to publish their articles Open Access in many Elsevier journals at a discounted rate.

In other terms, this agreement covers some of the Article Processing Charges (APCs) for Azusa Pacific authors whose research articles are accepted for publication in applicable Elsevier journals during the agreement period

The agreement is expected to cover open publication of 400+ articles per year for an estimated annual APC avoidance of ~$1.3M+ across 37+ participating institutions regardless of their ScienceDirect access (be it 'College Editions', Subject Collections, 'Unique Title List', 'Freedom Collection', or Subscribed titles only).

Please read on for information to determine if your research publication is eligible and to learn how to take advantage of this opportunity.

More information on the agreement can be found, here

Articles from authors at participating institutions will be published under the author's choice of the following licenses:

• CC-BY
• CC-BY-NC
• CC-BY-NC-ND

For more information on Creative Commons licenses see the home page of this guide

There are many ways that authors may learn of their eligibility.   

• By indicating their institutional affiliation as part of the article submission process (the system includes multiple checkpoints to encourage authors to match their institution to a standardized list).   
• By using an email address associated with their institution’s organizational domain.   
• By checking to see if their institution is listed on Elsevier's Institutional Eligibility Page.
• Via an email campaign from Elsevier which will only go to participating institution authors that have previously opted-in to be notified about open access opportunities.

Typically, authors may choose among two common Creative Commons licenses: CC-BY, CC-BY-NC, and CC-BY-NC-ND. Please see Elsevier's Open Access Article Licensing page for more details. Learn more about the advantages of publishing on the Elsevier platform.

For Core Hybrid journals there are unlimited corresponding author APC waivers.

However, for full open-access journals, there is a cap on APC waivers. Estimated waiver number: 2024: 89; 2025: 106; 2026: 126; 2027: 149. If the waivers are reached for the full open-access journals, corresponding authors of qualifying accepted articles will no longer be offered 'at-no-charge' open publication for the rest of the year. Authors submitting to a fully open-access Elsevier journal should be prepared to pay the APC at acceptance in the unlikely event that the number of fully OA journal articles published exceeds the limit in any given calendar year.

Elsevier has created a publication process tracking sheet that will help you know what happens next.

Submit your title and abstract to Elsevier's journal finder. Results that indicate: Open Access Yes or Optional are likely included in our agreement. Then double check to make sure it is on the Core & Gold List.

More detailed author workflow and information can be found on the SCELC site.