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Research Publishing & Impact: Elsevier ScienceDirect

Elsevier: OA Publishing Agreement

Elsevier is a leader in information and analytics helping researchers and healthcare professionals advance science and improve health outcomes for the benefit of society.

This capped agreement is for selected hybrid Elsevier journals. This agreement provides for an allowance of 13,689 articles, by authors from institutions participating in the agreement, to be published open access in 2025 with no transactional article processing charges (APCs). 

15% discount on the APC is available for Hybrid or Gold Open Access journal titles that are outside of the agreement..

Check the 2025 Otago OA Publishing Agreement Titles List (updated 3 March 2025) for your desired journal.

Article eligibility

Articles accepted from 1/1/2025 are eligible to be published open access under this agreement.

Article types

The following article types are eligible for open access under this agreement:

  • Full Length articles
  • Review articles
  • Case Reports
  • Protocols
  • Short Communications
  • Micro Articles
  • Original Software Publications
  • Short Surveys
  • Data
  • Practice guidelines
  • Replication Studies
  • Video Articles

 

Number of included articles

This capped agreement provides for an allowance of 13,689 articles by authors from institutions participating in the agreement to be published open access in 2025 with no transactional APCs.

Other charges

Elsevier does charge additional fees for page and/or colour fees. Authors should always check each journal’s submission guidelines to ensure that they will not be subject to any other fees or charges.

Title list

The agreement allows for publishing in most journals. If you wish to publish open access, please check to ensure that your desired journal is included.

Hybrid journals that 'flip' to OA during the course of this agreement remain available for OA publishing for the duration of this agreement. 

Author eligibility

As defined by the publisher, the eligible author is:

The corresponding author is the person who submits the manuscript and other related documentation to the journal and is the primary contact between the journal and all other authors. If the paper is published, the corresponding author is also the first point of contact for readers. For more details are available from the website under Eligibility FAQs section.

Responsible corresponding authors must include a participating institution as one of their affiliations to benefit from this agreement. 

Authors will be identified as eligible for open access publishing by their:

  • institutional affiliation (e.g. institution's name, Ringgold, ROR, etc.)
  • email address

Responsible corresponding authors must use their @otago.ac.nz email address when submitting an article for publication. 

Responsible corresponding authors should not use personal email addresses (e.g. Hotmail, Gmail). Doing so may result in delayed approval of the article or the article may not be approved to be published open access under the terms of the agreement. 

Author rights

Articles from authors at participating institutions may be published under the following Creative Commons licenses:

  • CC BY
  • CC BY-NC
  • CC BY-NC-ND

Some or all exclusive rights are assigned to the publisher.

Please see here for Elsevier's OA licence policies.

Further information about licenses is available on the publisher's website.

The Creative Commons licenses allow reuse (some with conditions) while protecting the authors' rights of acknowledgment as authors. 

How to submit your article for open access publishing

  1. Follow the Elsevier's usual article submission process via https://www.elsevier.com/authors/submit-your-paper
  2. On acceptance of the article, the publisher will ask the corresponding author to make their publishing choices and complete a form (publishing agreement).
  3. The corresponding author selects open access and confirms the licence type (e.g. CC-BY).
  4. The APC is automatically waived for authors who have declared their affiliation to a participating CAUL institution during the publishing workflow.

Archiving in institutional repositories

Authors may deposit articles in institutional repositories.

  • Preprints may be deposited at any time 
  • For subscription articles, Author accepted manuscripts may be made available via institutional repositories after the journal’s stated embargo period.
  • Gold open access articles may be deposited at any time

View the publisher’s policy on article sharing for further information.

Contact details: Elsevier

Please email oasupport@elsevier.com for questions regarding this agreement. Please include your full name, institution, article title, journal name and DOI (if available), and state the reason for your enquiry.

Archiving in institutional repositories

Authors may deposit articles in institutional repositories.

  • Preprints may be deposited at any time 
  • For subscription articles, Author accepted manuscripts may be made available via institutional repositories after the journal’s stated embargo period.
  • Gold open access articles may be deposited at any time

View the publisher’s policy on article sharing for further information.

 

Elsevier - Retrospectively submitting an article to OA (having submitted behind paywall)

Elsevier can retrospectively convert the publishing model (from Subscription to OA) utilizing the CAUL quota.

Please ask your author to contact publishing support here to start the process: https://service.elsevier.com/app/contact/supporthub/publishing/

The full process is here: https://service.elsevier.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5997/c/10533/supporthub/publishing/kw/open+access/ (except there would be no invoice for eligible articles under the agreement).

In essence, Elsevier will gather the article details from the author and then resubmit to the publication system, for approval from CAUL.