The four publishers that Stockholm University signed agreements with are Copernicus Publications, Frontiers Media, Public Library of Science (PLoS) and MDPI. They have been selected as they are the most used by researchers at Stockholm University.

Stockholm University has also entered into a number of national agreements with traditional publishers where articles published there become Open Access. These publishers are Springer, Institute of Physics (IOP), Taylor & Francis, de Gruyter and Royal Society of Chemistry. Thanks to the agreements, the researchers do not need to pay any APCs for the Open Access publishing, since the fees are covered by the library.

Additional national agreements are being negotiated with Elsevier and Wiley.

Everything should be open 2026

According to the research government bill in 2016, the goal is to make all scientific publications that are financed by public funds openly available immediately when they are published, by 2026. All stakeholders within the research system share the responsibility to fulfill this strategic objective. Today, 37 percent of the articles published by researchers from Stockholm University are available as Open Access, but in order to meet the 100 percent objective, active work is required. Central funding for Open Access publishing is one of the University strategies to achieve this goal.

To finance a total transition to Open Access centrally would be very expensive today, since the University in addition to the APCs also pays large subscription fees to render reading the articles. The transition must therefore be taken gradually in order to be cost-effective. In today’s system, Stockholm University pays the publishers both to be able to read and to publish. These cost flows must be harmonized to prevent the costs of scientific communication to bolt. At the same time, the agreements will facilitate for our researchers by reducing the administrative process of micro payments to the publishers.

How the publishers were selected

To find out where central contributions would have the largest impact, Stockholm University Library studied where the University’s researchers publish most of their material and to which publishers the researchers pay most APCs for Open Access publishing. 

With the local and national agreements made Stockholm University have agreements regarding Open Access publishing with most major publishers where researchers at Stockholm University publish their material. The library will continuously follow up the publication patterns to see where efforts are needed. 

List of discounts and prepaid fees

All publishing agreements at the library are gathered at the library’s website. That includes both agreements listed above concerning prepaid APCs, but it also includes discounts for researchers where the researchers need to request the discount themselves.  

You can find the agreements here: Discounted and prepaid article processing charges

Do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions regarding the agreements or Open Access publishing in general: openaccess@su.se