Read & Publish Agreements Negotiated by CAUL

The article cap for open access publishing has been exhausted. No further open access publishing will be possible until the cap resets in 2024.

This agreement commenced in January 2022.

The 2023 cap on this agreement is 3,359 articles.

Read more about this agreement from Springer Nature.

This page was last updated on 7 November 2023.

All 47 Australian and New Zealand universities that are Members of CAUL are participating in this agreement, in addition to a number of institutes:

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 open access in 1,976 titles with no transactional APCs. This includes most titles across Springer Nature imprints including Springer, Palgrave, ADIS, and Academic Journals on Nature.com. Please note: Nature titles are not included. 

View the full list of Springer Nature titles. Includes annotations for excluded titles.

It includes high impact titles such as 

• Electrochemical Energy Reviews
• Cell Research 
• The Astronomy and Astrophysics Review
• Fungal Diversity
• Intensive Care Medicine
• Basic Research in Cardiology
• Acta Neuropathologica
• Molecular Psychiatry
• Cell Death & Differentiation
• Cellular & Molecular Immunology
• Leukemia, Exposure and Health
• Journal of International Business Studies.

The list also includes journals for the following Australian and New Zealand Societies:

Included titles with high Australian and New Zealand authorship include:

• Supportive Care in Cancer
• Environmental Science and Pollution Research
• Plant and Soil
• Coral Reefs
• Sports Medicine
• Journal of Business Ethics
• Intensive Care Medicine
• The Australian Educational Researcher.

Open access publishing covered under this Read & Publish agreement includes the following article types:

• Original Paper: Standard article, generally presenting new results which may also be referred to as Original Research, Original Article, Original Paper or Research Paper. 
• Review Paper: Standard article, interpreting previously published results. 
• Brief Communication: Short article submitted for rapid publication that exhibits the same structure as a standard article.
• Continuing Education: Article forming integral part of further education (usually medical).

Authors who wish to make excluded article types openly available may choose to:

• Publish “closed access” and deposit the Author’s Accepted Manuscript in their institutional repository – view the publisher’s policies for information on embargoes.
• Pay an APC (if applicable) to publish the article open access.

Eligible articles that have an acceptance date during the term of this agreement are eligible to be published open access under the terms of the agreement.

• This agreement provides for an allowance of 3,359 articles by authors from institutions participating in the agreement to be published open access in 2023 with no transactional APCs. 
• The allowance is a collective pool for all participating CAUL Member institutions.
• Once the allowance is used, authors of any additional articles accepted in 2023, may choose to publish articles as "closed access" or to pay an APC for the article to be published open access.

Other charges (including page and colour charges) will vary by imprint and may depend on whether Springer Nature owns the journal or it is a society owned journal. These charges may not be covered under the agreement. Authors will be notified about options regarding colour and page charges through their communications with journal editors.

Page charges for Springer Nature owned journals will be waived. 

Please note: For articles to be published open access under the terms of this agreement, corresponding authors must

• select a participating institution as their affiliation in the publisher system
• use an institutional email address for a participating institution (see Participating institutions list above) when submitting their article.

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. 

Corresponding authors from institutions listed under 'Participating institutions' above may publish immediately to open access on the publisher's platform once the article has been accepted, with no transactional APCs. Page and colour charges may apply.

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

• CC-BY
• CC-BY-NC.

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

Researchers who require a CC-BY-NC-ND licence should contact the editors for the relevant journal. Please note the only option provided for ADIS titles is CC-BY-NC. Researchers who require other CC-BY licence types should contact the editors for the relevant journal.

1. Follow the publisher's usual article submission process via the journal’s homepage.
2. On acceptance of the article, the publisher will ask the corresponding author to 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 
   1. used an institutional email address belonging to one of the participating institutions
   2. selected a participating institution as their institutional affiliation from a drop down list.

Please see this informative video for a walkthrough of the article submission process: 

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

• email address
• institutional affiliation
• IP address range.

Corresponding authors must use their institutional email address when submitting an article for publication in order for the publication to be approved to be published open access with no transactional APCs.

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. 

The license is available for download from ConsortiaManager. Library staff should contact the designated Content Coordinator at their institution regarding any license enquiries.

Read access entitlements for Springer, ADIS, Palgrave and Academic Journals on Nature.com collections subscribed to in 2021 will continue for 2022. Check with your Content Coordinator if you are not sure what packages your library subscribes to.

• The allowance is allocated to the CAUL Consortium as a whole, not to individual institutions.
• CAUL National Office will approve articles for publication under the agreement. Institutions will only need to intervene in instances where further information is needed to ascertain if the article and/or author is eligible. 
• It is expected that the threshold of included articles will be reached later in 2022.
• Once the threshold of included articles is reached, authors of any additional articles accepted in 2022 may choose to publish articles as "closed access" or to pay an APC for the article to be published open access.
• The allowance applies to articles accepted in the subscription year and resets at the beginning of the next year. If the allowance is exceeded in 2022, open access publishing without transactional APCs will recommence in January 2023 under the Read & Publish agreement for 2023.
• As the year progresses, information about when the threshold of included articles is expected to be reached will be posted to this guide. Content Coordinators will also be updated on a regular basis.

Through this agreement, the version of record will be available under a CC-BY licence fully open access immediately upon publication. Institutions wishing to re-host the version of record in an institutional repository are free to do so.

• A variety of reports will be available to CAUL on a monthly and quarterly basis.
• CAUL will share publishing output data with participating institutions on a regular basis.