The Geological Society of London is a not -for-profit organisation improving the understanding of Earth Science and is a global leader in Earth science publishing. The Lyell Collection online comprises the Society's journals, special publications and books. The Society's Transformative Read and Publish agreement includes: Unlimited Open Access publishing under a CC-BY license in 11 hybrid journal and book series; Read access to the Lyell Collection of 7 journals, 4 historical sites and 600+ books; Corresponding authors are eligible for Open Access, recognised at submission and through ChronosHub; Perpetual access for content published in subscribed to years.
Further information on this agreement is available from The Geological Society.
This page was last updated on 6 February 2025.
The following institutions participate in this agreement:
Authors who do not see their institution listed above should contact library staff to enquire further.
This agreement allows authors from participating institutions to publish in all of The Geological Society’s hybrid and gold journals without the need for any transactional open access article processing charge (APC).
This is an uncapped agreement. There is no limit on the number of articles that can be published OA under this agreement.
From January 2024 we have partnered with ChronosHub which allows librarians to self-service real-time reporting for articles published at your institution. https://chronoshub.io/services/institutions/
New read content coming in 2024 includes the Energy Geoscience Conference.
GSL partnered with the American Geophysical Union to publish GeoHorizons an open science book series - volumes expected in 2025 will be included. The fully OA journal Earth Science, Systems and Society is included in the agreement and APCs in that open access journal waived for signed up institutions.
Articles submitted from 1/1/2025 are eligible to be published open access under this agreement.
Article submission date is used for eligibility however if an institution joins late in the year retrospective OA may be possible to the beginning of the year of the agreement. Agreements are January to December.
The following article types are eligible for open access under this agreement:
As defined by the publisher, the eligible author is:
Eligible authors are corresponding authors submitting using their institutional email address and affiliation. Corresponding authors handle correspondence and agreements during the editorial and production process on behalf of all authors and are listed on the article for any queries post-publication. Email address and/or affiliation are used to automatically identify eligibility through our manuscript submission system/ChronosHub and we also offer a ‘human eye’ check.
If research forming the article was completed at the institution with the agreement but the corresponding author has moved affiliations and no longer has access to their institutional email address, the article can be included within the agreement if consent is given by the institution holding the agreement.
Articles must be submitted for the first time during the agreement term to be eligible. Articles submitted during the agreement term but accepted outside of it will be published open access under the terms of the agreement.
If an eligible article is not identified due to system failure or because the corresponding author did not supply the correct information, open access will be applied retrospectively if notified within 12 months of publication.
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:
Responsible corresponding authors must use their institutional 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.
During the submission process, corresponding authors will be informed that their article is eligible to be published under an agreement. It will be clear that no APC is payable.
Authors may opt not to publish Open Access during the manuscript submission process.
There is no validation step by institutions and all eligible articles are published open access automatically. If an institution wishes to approve articles this can be implemented via ChronosHub on request.
Authors retain the copyright in the article and a Creative Commons CC BY licence will be used for the published article. This means that the final published version of record can be shared immediately e.g. from the Lyell Collection, as well as uploaded to institutional repositories.
The decision to publish an article is always made on editorial criteria through the peer review process and is entirely separate from the model an article is published under.
No other APC discounts are offered under this agreement.
The agreement allows for publishing in all journals. The complete title list is available online. 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 will remain available for OA publishing for the duration of the agreement.
Articles from authors at participating institutions may be published under the following Creative Commons licenses:
Authors retain all rights as per the CC license.
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.
Article approvals are managed by the publisher via Chronoshub.
The Geological Society does not 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.
The following instructions for authors have been provided by the publisher. Further details are available on the publisher’s website.
Corresponding authors submit using Editorial Manager submission system.
During the manuscript submission process, corresponding authors will be informed that their article is eligible to be published under the agreement. It will be made clear that no APC is payable.
Authors may opt not to publish Open Access during the manuscript submission process.
There is no validation step by institutions and all eligible articles are published open access automatically.Authors retain the copyright in the article and a Creative Commons CC BY licence will be used for the published article.
The decision to publish an article is always made on editorial criteria through the peer review process and is entirely separate from the model an article is published under.
Example screenshot(s):
Please email subs@geolsoc.org.uk 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.
Please contact library staff at your institution for questions related to this agreement. They can provide advice on using the CAUL Open Access Agreements.
