Open Access agreements with publishers

The University of Strasbourg is taking part in the “read and green” agreement negotiated with the ACS Publications by the Couperin.org consortium for the period 2024-2026.
Within this agreement, researchers at the university will be allowed to deposit their author accepted manuscript with a CC-BY license in an institutional repository such as univOAK or HAL immediately after publication, without the usual six-month embargo.

To benefit from this “zero embargo” option, affiliation with the University of Strasbourg must be indicated both in the manuscript and when the article is submitted. When the manuscript has been accepted for publication, the author will be asked if he or she wishes to participate in the “read and green” agreement and thus to retain copyright on the author accepted manuscript through completion of the Journal Publishing Agreement.

This agreement does not include the cost of open access publication on the journal's website. It only provides reduced APCs (Article Processing Charges) rates of $2,000. For these so-called hybrid journals (= journals under subscription), APC charges cannot be covered by the university due to its open science policy, nor by ANR or European funding.

“Publish in open access” option: it is not necessary to choose this option to meet the open science requirements of funders. Immediate self-archiving of the author accepted manuscript under a CC-BY license in univOAK or HAL is sufficient to comply with the open access requirements. The article will then be published in a traditional way, at no extra cost for the research teams, and will be accessible under subscription on the journal's website.

For full open access titles from the ACS Au family of journals, the reduced APC rates are $1,000 for authors affiliated with the University of Strasbourg.

 Publishing process on the ACS website

 List of 2024 ACS journals

A Publish and Read agreement was negotiated by the Couperin.org consortium for the period 2022-2026 as part of the Ministry of Higher Education and Research french publishing support plan. This agreement provides an open access publication with a CC-BY type license without APC (Article Processing Charge) for all member institutions of the agreement within a list of 30 journals. The management is done automatically on the basis of the correspondence author affiliation address.

 List of journals involved

As part of the national license concluded for 2024-2027 with Elsevier, Unistra correspondence authors can publish their accepted articles in the Freedom Complete Collection and Bibliothèque Médicale Française (BMF) journals at no additional cost, with immediate open access and no embargo, with the exception of The Lancet, Cell Press and some journal titles of learned societies.

Articles published in immediate open access under the agreement can then be deposited in their final edited version in the univOAK open archive.

The stock of rights is calibrated to cover 100% of the subscribing establishments corresponding author articles. It represents 11 268 in 2025. It is consortial and not specific to each institution; it decreases over the publications since January, 1st 2025.

Corresponding authors exercise their publication rights in open access through the Elsevier workflow: after acceptance of their article, they indicate their home institution and choose from three CC-BY license options to affix to their article, the CC-BY license is being recommended, in particular by the ANR.

The eligibility of a correspondence author to benefit from a right of publication in open access is checked and approved by the library service on the basis of affiliation to Unistra. Staff not employed, but hosted by Unistra, are invited to enter their home institution in the Elsevier workflow. The Strasbourg University Hospitals (HUS), the CNRS and INSERM also participate in this agreement. Their researchers can benefit from these conditions within their institution.

For non-eligible journals, including The Lancet and Cell Press, or when the stock of rights is over, publication in open access becomes chargeable, but on an optional basis. In this case, a discount of 10% will be granted on the APC amount (Article Processing Charge).

 List of titles eligible for immediate open access publication without embargo and no additional cost at Unistra

 Type of articles eligible for immediate open access without embargo and no additional cost

 APC prices for journals not eligible for immediate open access without additional cost

 Author Worflow (English)

 Elsevier webpage on agreement

Within the agreement content concluded by the Couperin.org consortium, a 10% discount on the APC (Article Processing Charge) rate is applied to "peer-reviewed research" articles from journals in the High Impact collection (65 titles in medicine). This applies to original research articles. Editorials, reviews, meeting summaries and letters are excluded. The discount applies if the corresponding article author is affiliated with the University of Strasbourg and if he chooses to publish in Open Access when submitting his article via the publisher Editorial Manager system.

 List of journals concerned

Researchers affiliated with the Strasbourg University Hospitals (HUS) also benefit from this discount.

The subscription to the RSC journal collection suscribed by the University of Strasbourg includes a number of prepaid APCs (Article Processing Charges) (279 in 2024 across the Couperin.org consortium – updated number for 2025 to come ). Once the stock of prepaid APCs has been consumed, a 15% discount is automatically applied to other APCs. This 15% discount is also valid for RSC journals published natively in open access (gold open access).

The RSC workflow automatically identifies the authors' affiliation to University of Strasbourg through the domain of their email address. When their manuscript is accepted, authors receive a message stating that they can benefit from the conditions of the agreement concluded with the RSC. They are then asked to click on the link that directs them to the licensing system.

Articles published in immediate open access can be deposited in their final edited version in the institutional open archive UnivOAK.

 List of journals concerned

 Workflow for authors

The University of Strasbourg is a member of the international consortium SCOAP3 (the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics), led by the CERN. This consortium of 3,000 partners around the world (libraries, funding agencies, research organisations, etc.) funds the transition to open access for journals in the field of high-energy physics. SCOAP3 pays publishers in a centralized way to cover publishing and online costs, and publishers reduce the subscription fees for a hybrid journal or convert the whole journal into an open access one. Publication in SCOAP3 journals is free for author.

 List of journals concerned

As part of the subscription to the Thieme journal package, the University of Strasbourg benefits from a 50% discount on the APC amount (Article Processing Charge) which goes from €2,500 to €1,250 excluding tax for the 5 following journals:

• Pharmacopsychiatry
• Planta Medica
• Synfacts
• Synlett
• Synthesis.

For the period 2022-2025,  the University of Strasbourg takes part in the global open access publishing and reading agreement (Publish and Read) negotiated by Couperin.org for Wiley journals.

Negotiated publication rights allow corresponding authors from subscribing institutions to publish in immediate open access their accepted articles in Wiley and Hindawi-Wiley hybrid and full open acccess journals, without embargo and additional cost.

These articles can be deposited in their final edited version in the univOAK open archive.

The stock of rights is calibrated to cover 100% of the subscribing establishments corresponding author articles. It represented 3001 in 2024 (updated number for 2025 to come). It is consortial and not specific to each institution; it decreases over the publications since January, 1st 2025.

When this stock of rights is over, publication in open access becomes chargeable again, but on an optional basis; in this case, a discount of 15% (Wiley hybrid review), 10% (Wiley full gold review) or 0% (Hindawi-Wiley review) will be granted.

Corresponding authors exercise their publication rights in open access through the Wiley workflow, after acceptance of their article (Wiley hybrid journals) or at the time of submission (Wiley or Hindawi-Wiley full gold journals). They indicate their home institution and choose from three CC-BY license options to affix to their article, the CC-BY license is being recommended, in particular by the ANR.

The author of correspondence eligibility to benefit from a right of publication in open access is validated by the subscriber establishment administrator to which he belongs. An author of correspondence employed by a subscribing establishment benefits from the rights of publication in open access. An author of correspondence who is not employed but hosted by an establishment can be considered as having rights of this establishment.

The agreement only covers open access publication costs. Other publication costs (additional pages, etc.) remain the responsibility of the authors or laboratories.

The Strasbourg University Hospitals (HUS) also participates in this agreement, so that their researchers can benefit from these conditions.

 List of journals concerned

 Author Workflow – Hybrid Journals (English)

 Author Workflow – Full Gold Journals (English)

 Wiley webpage on agreement