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 agreement with Springer Publishing until December 31, 2024*. 'Springer Compact' transformative agreement (defined) which leverages existing subscriptions that provide standard institutional access and post cancellation rights to add support for open access publishing. This agreement allows Azusa Pacific University-affiliated authors to publish their articles Open Access in many Springer Journals at no cost to themselves.

In other terms, this agreement covers the Article Processing Charges (APCs) for Azusa Pacific authors whose research articles are accepted for publication in applicable Springer journals during the 1-year agreement. It covers participating institutions’ corresponding author article publication charges for 2068 hybrid journals contained within Springer, society-owned “Academic Journals on Nature.com”, Adis, and Palgrave collections included in your current subscription. It does not include reading or open publishing of Nature-branded or Scientific American content.

The agreement covers open publication of up to 550, 2023 articles across all 68 participating SCELC institutions, which is roughly 101% of the average number of qualifying articles that participating institutions’ corresponding authors published in those journals over the past 5 years. While it is possible that we will collectively exceed this cap, it is unlikely, because the typical author OA opt-out rate is ~10%. The agreement does NOT cover the 279 fully open access journals in the Springer portfolio: we hope to be able to cover these in the next agreement without additional costs to subscribing libraries.

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

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

• CC-BY
• CC-BY-NC

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

To be eligible, articles must:

• Be original research – Original Papers, Review Papers, Brief Communications, or Continuing Education
• Have a corresponding author affiliated with Azusa Pacific University (faculty, lecturer, staff, and student authors at subscribing institutions).
• Be submitted using their Azusa Pacific University email address.
• Be accepted for publication in one of 2068 Hybrid titles in Springer All+, Academic Journals on Nature.com, Adis & Palgrave (Excludes Nature-branded and Scientific American titles as well as Springer Fully OA journals and Also excludes 180 third-party titles from Pleiades Publishing)
• Be accepted for publication between 1 January 2022 and 31 December 2024.

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 that their institution is listed on Springer’s Institutional Eligibility Page.
• Via an email campaign from Springer which will only go to participating institution authors that have previously opted-in to be notified about open access opportunities.

You may also view the Eligibility Process video (on the right side of this page) that will walk you through the steps for determining eligibility.

Typically, authors may choose among three common Creative Commons licenses: CC-BY & CC-BY-NC. Please see Springer's Open Access Article Licensing page for more detail. Learn more about the advantages of publishing on the Springer platform.

If 550 corresponding authors at SCELC institutions accept Open Publication of their articles before Dec 31, 2023, authors of qualifying accepted articles will no longer be offered 'at-no-charge' open publication for the rest of the year.

Springer has created a publication process that will help you know what happens next.

Submit your title and abstract to Springer's journal finder. Then to check the journal's eligibility, search for the title on this spreadsheet.