The University of Bath has signed up to a number of publisher agreements which may mean the cost of the Open Access article processing charge (APC) is reduced or waived. If you are considering publishing with one of the below publishers, please read about what agreement we have in place and whether you might be able to benefit from it. If in doubt, please contact openaccess@bath.ac.uk for further information.
To check whether a specific journal is included in one of our open access agreements, or find suitable journals in a particular subject area, try searching the Bath Journal Search.
Quick search available here:
If the journal is included in an agreement, please check the terms of the agreement by clicking on the relevant publisher name below to find out the eligibility criteria and instructions for submission.
If a search of the Bath Journal Search produces no results this may mean that it is a fully open access journal and you will need to apply for funding using the APC Request Form. If in doubt, contact openaccess@bath.ac.uk
The AAAS does not offer a read & publish agreement but, on a trial basis from 1 Jan 2021, authors of research funded by cOAlition S organizations that have implemented a Plan S-aligned open access policy including a Rights Retention Strategy may, upon publication by AAAS, distribute their accepted manuscript under a CC BY licence (or a CC BY-ND license, if permitted by the funder - permission needs to be granted prior to submission). During the pilot the Licence to Publish will confirm this policy.
All AAAS journals are compliant with Plan S and cOAlition S funders including Horizon Europe, UKRI and the Wellcome Trust.
Our open access agreement with AAAS gives a 10% discount on the APC when publishing in the fully Open Access journal: Science Advances. This discount is available to all University of Bath authors.
How to access: Within the AAAS manuscript management system: select 'Apply discounts', search for and select University of Bath in the 'Affiliation discount' box then click 'Apply discounts' to see the discount of -$450 applied. Please ensure that you are listed as the corresponding author, with a Bath affiliation and e-mail address entered into the publisher’s submission system, and select the CC BY licence when prompted.
The new JISC Read and Publish agreement with ACS for 2022-25 has been activated. This provides unlimited open access publishing for Bath corresponding authors in all ACS journals. If you are submitting to a hybrid journal you will be able to request open access publication via the JISC agreement at acceptance. Please use your University of Bath email address and affiliation on submission to the journal and request the CC-BY licence when prompted.
We have a JISC Read & Publish agreement with AIP from 2021-2023. This provides Bath corresponding authors with cost-free open access publishing of research articles in any of AIP’s hybrid journals. Hybrid journals are journals which offer the option to publish either Open Access or with subscription access. When submitting, please ensure that you are listed as the corresponding author, with a Bath affiliation and e-mail address entered into the publisher’s submission system. At the acceptance stage you will be asked to confirm your affiliation and that you wish to publish open access via the agreement. Please select the CC-BY licence when prompted. Your request will be sent to the open access team for approval.
We have a Read & Publish agreement with the American Meteorological Society which includes all of their hybrid and fully open access journals. University of Bath corresponding authors can publish open access with a CC BY licence in these journals at no additional cost. Page charges will not be levied on articles published via this agreement. More information is available on the publisher website.
Please use your University of Bath affiliation and email address on submission. These will be matched to our agreement on acceptance, and you will need to sign the CC BY licence.
We are participating in the UK Interim Open Access Program with APS which supports UK authors who wish to publish open access in the Physical Review journals while a formal open access agreement is being negotiated with JISC. APS has enabled an automated open access workflow on its hybrid journals which will allow eligible authors with articles accepted by Physical Review journals to be published open access with a CC-BY licence at no cost to themselves. Article types include, but are not limited to: Regular Articles, Letters, Rapid Communications, Reviews, Perspectives, and Short Papers. The interim period runs from March 1, 2023 onwards. More information is available here. When submitting, please ensure that you are listed as the corresponding author, with a Bath affiliation and e-mail address entered into the publisher’s submission system. At the acceptance stage you will be asked to confirm your affiliation and that you wish to publish open access. Please select the CC-BY licence when prompted.
If you wish to submit to one of the APS non-participating open access journals, please use the APC Request form to apply for open access funding.
We have a Read & Publish agreement with the American Physiological Society which includes their 12 hybrid journals.
University of Bath corresponding authors can publish open access with a CC BY licence in these journals at no additional cost.
APS are also offering one year's free membership of APS for corresponding authors at participating institutions (new members only). More information here.
Please use your University of Bath affiliation and email address on submission. These will be matched to our agreement on acceptance, and you will need to sign the CC BY licence.
We have signed up to a new JISC APA OA Publishing agreement which runs from August 2023 to July 2024. This provides Bath corresponding authors with cost-free open access publishing of research articles in 88 APA-published journals within the APA PsycArticles portfolio. These are subscription journals which offer an open access publication option. When submitting, please ensure that you are listed as the corresponding author, with a Bath affiliation and e-mail address entered into the publisher’s submission system. At the acceptance stage you will be asked to confirm your affiliation and that you wish to publish open access via the agreement. Please select the CC-BY licence when prompted. Your request will be sent to the open access team for approval. Please note that we cannot pay any additional (page/colour/figure) charges from our open access funds
We have a new JISC transformative agreement with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) to enable unlimited open access publishing in all of its journals, magazines and conference publications for papers with a University of Bath corresponding author. This deal covers research articles and conference proceedings. The deal is in place until 31 December 2025.
More details are available from ACM here
When submitting, please ensure that you are listed as the corresponding author, with a Bath affiliation and e-mail address entered into the publisher’s submission system. At the acceptance stage you will be asked to confirm your affiliation and that you wish to publish open access via the agreement. Please select the CC-BY licence when prompted.
Our agreement with Bentham is that corresponding authors affiliated with the University of Bath who submit an article to a Bentham Science open access journal or select the open access option in a hybrid journal will receive a 40% discount on the article processing charge (APC). Please ensure that you are listed as the corresponding author, with a Bath affiliation and e-mail address entered into the publisher’s submission system. Please select the CC-BY licence when prompted.
We have a prepayment account with Springer/Nature which is available for use by all Bath corresponding authors. It includes all of Springer's BMC journals plus SpringerOpen (fully open access) journals; it also includes Chemistry Central journal (now known as BMC Chemistry).
A full list of BMC journals can be found here
A full list of SpringerOpen journals can be found here
To apply for funding from this account you will need to complete our online APC request form - available from the link above. Please use your University of Bath email address and affiliation for the submission.
We have signed up to a Publish & Read agreement with BMJ from 1 Feb 2023 to 31 Dec 2024. This is exclusively for original articles reporting on primary research
A full list of journals included in the deal can be found here (scroll down to 'Find out if you are entitled to institutional funding' and select University of Bath from the drop-down. Scroll down to the header on the right, 'The journals that you can publish in with fees covered by the agreement' - underneath you can access the list of included journals).
You need to be corresponding author on the paper and using your University of Bath email address and affiliation. When submitting; you will be asked to verify your Bath open access agreement affiliation and your request will be sent to the OA team for eligibility checks. The cost will then be covered via the agreement at acceptance, and your article published open access with a CC-BY licence.
Our existing pre-payment account with BMJ will run alongside this, and covers research and review articles in fully open access journals with a University of Bath affiliated author.
Please complete our online APC request form prior to submission. On submission to the journal please use your University of Bath email address and select your open access agreement affiliation: your ‘agreement name’ or ‘institution’ will be available to select in the dropdown options. Please select the CC-BY licence. Upon acceptance, the open access team we will review your request from our central dashboard. If approved, you will receive a confirmation email from RightsLink®.
Papers with a Bath corresponding author but not eligible for either agreement will receive a 25% discount.
The University of Bath Library has signed a Read and Publish deal with the Company of Biologists from 1 January 2022 to 31 December 2024. This deal enables unlimited open access publishing of research articles for University of Bath corresponding authors in CoB’s hybrid journals: Development, Journal of Cell Science and Journal of Experimental Biology, and fully open access journals: Disease Models & Mechanisms and Biology Open, without barriers or charges to authors.
Please use your University of Bath email address on all submissions and select the CC-BY licence when prompted.
A step-by-step author guide to article submission is available here
We have a JISC Read & Publish agreement with Elsevier from 2022-2024. This provides Bath corresponding authors with cost-free open access publishing of research articles in most of Elsevier’s hybrid (subscription) journals including Cell Press and Lancet journals. See Elsevier's participating journals search. In non-Cell Press/Lancet journals, the following additional article types are covered: Case Reports, Data in Brief, Microarticle, Original Software Publication, Protocol, Replication Study, Short Communication, Short Survey, Video Article, Practice Guideline. When submitting, please ensure that you are listed as the corresponding author, with a Bath affiliation and e-mail address entered into the publisher’s submission system. After acceptance, you will receive an email with a link to the 'post-acceptance author journey', where you should select the open access publishing option. Please select the CC-BY licence when prompted – this is required by most funders. The Open Access Team will be notified of your request, and will check that your paper is eligible before approving it.
Our agreement with Elsevier also extends to their fully gold journals: University of Bath corresponding authors can publish in any of Elsevier’s fully gold journals with a discount of 15% on the APC cost. Please apply for funding via our APC Request form prior to submission to the journal. Please use your Bath email address and affiliation on all submissions. You will be notified of the agreement at submission. Please select the CC-BY licence.
We have a JISC Open Access Partnership agreement with Frontiers for 2023. This provides Bath corresponding authors with cost-free open access publishing of research and review articles with CC-BY licence in all of Frontiers' fully open access journals. Please ensure that you are listed as the corresponding author, with a Bath affiliation and e-mail address entered into the publisher’s submission system, and select University of Bath in the payment information section (“Frontiers institutional members”) when submitting your article. Frontiers will verify your eligibility with the library and, if confirmed, the APC will be paid by the University of Bath upon acceptance. For information on whether your article is eligible under this agreement, or if you require any further details, please visit University of Bath open access page or contact: openaccess@bath.ac.uk
The University of Bath Library has signed a Read and Publish deal with IOPP. This deal enables unlimited open access publishing for University of Bath corresponding authors in 56 of IOPP’s subscription journals, without barriers or charges to authors. The agreement also includes the majority of IOPP's fully open access journals. Lists of journals included in this deal can be found here. See lists A, B and D on this web page. Please use your University of Bath email address and affiliation on all submissions and select the CC-BY licence when prompted. For journals not included in this list, please make a request via our APC form.
IJSC is a peer-reviewed, academic journal specialising in sport science, sport performance, and strength & conditioning. The IJSC is “diamond” Open-Access journal, bringing scientific research to the entire community at zero-cost to the consumer and author. We are supporter members of this journal via JISC’s Open Access Community Framework (OACF) for 2022/4.
Full instructions on how to submit your preprint are available on the IJSC information for authors page.
The University has signed a flat fee agreement with JMIR, which provides unlimited open access publishing of review and primary research articles for University of Bath corresponding authors in JMIR journals. The deal covers manuscript submissions from 01 April 2023 to 31 March 2024. In addition to the requirement for authors to use their @bath.ac.uk email address and University of Bath affiliation during the submission process, authors should indicate in their cover letter that they are "requesting APC waiver through the Bath-JMIR Open Access deal via JISC.
University of Bath authors can publish via OA in all Liebert hybrid journals (apart from the video journals) - see list - at no cost due to an arrangement made between the publisher and the university library. As the corresponding author, simply submit your paper to the journal author submission system in the usual way and the publisher will check with University of Bath library services that the paper is eligible for free OA publishing and then push the paper through the usual peer review and publication process.
Journal articles with a corresponding author affiliated to the University of Bath are eligible for a 10% discount on article processing charges (APCs). This agreement is available for all Bath authors. Please use your University of Bath email address when submitting. This discount applies automatically when submitting to the journal. If you wish the APC to be paid from the UKRI, Wellcome Trust or BHF block grants, or from the Bath Open Access Fund - please apply for funding via the APC request form. The journal must be a Q1 title as measured by the Web of Science Journal Citation Reports or SCImago Journal Rankings. For further information on MDPI APCs, please follow this link
The program also grants authors a reduction on the Book Processing Charges (BPCs) for MDPI Books (http://www.mdpi.com/books).
We have recently signed up to a JISC Read & Publish agreement with Optica for 2022-2024, which provides open access publication of research and review articles for Bath corresponding authors in selected hybrid and open access journals from Optica’s portfolio. Subscription/hybrid titles: Advances in Optics and Photonics, Applied Optics, Journal of the Optical Society of America A, Journal of the Optical Society of America B, Optics Letters. Fully open access titles: Biomedical Optics Express, Optica, Optical Materials Express, Optics Express, Optics Continuum. Please use your University of Bath email address and affiliation when submitting. Corresponding authors from participating institutions will be notified of the agreement and will be asked to confirm the publication licence: please make sure to select the CC-BY (Creative Commons Attribution) licence.
Eligible articles published in 2022 before the agreement was signed will be converted to open access by Optica.
More information is available about the agreement or here
We have signed up to the JISC OUP Read & Publish deal from March 2021. This provides University of Bath corresponding authors with open access publishing of original research or review articles in the majority of OUP's hybrid and fully open access journals. List of journals included in the deal is here. Please use your University of Bath email address and affiliation when submitting. When asked to select a licence, please be aware that research funders require a CC-BY licence – not CC BY-NC or CC BY-NC-ND. If you are not presented with the CC BY licence option, then please email openaccess@bath.ac.uk and let us know. If your article is in receipt of funding from UKRI, Wellcome Trust, Cancer Research UK or British Heart Foundation, please ensure the research funders' names and grant numbers are provided. Detailed author instructions are available here. Any enquiries about the OUP deal should be addressed to: openaccess@bath.ac.uk or via the APC request form.
We have an Annual Membership Agreement with PeerJ which is available for use by all Bath-affiliated authors. This provides cost-free open access publication regardless of research funder. Please use your University of Bath affiliation and email address on submission and select the CC-BY licence. The affiliation will be matched to our agreement on acceptance and there will be no need for additional approval from us.
PCJ is a ‘diamond’ open access journal (free for both authors and readers). It publishes articles dealing with evolutionary biology, ecology, zoology, neuroscience, paleontology, animal science, archaeology, genomics, mathematical and computational biology, network Science, forest and wood science, biotic interactions, ecotoxicology and environmental chemistry. It will also publish articles based on registered reports dealing with all physical sciences, life sciences, social sciences, and humanities.
The journal is run by researchers for researchers and is funded by public research institutions via the not-for-profit and non-commercial Peer Community In (PCI) organisation. Articles are published as a result of first peer-review and then recommendation by one of the thematic Peer Communities (current thematic PCIs).
Articles published by Peer Community Journal are published under a CC-BY licence.
Full instructions on how to submit your preprint are available on the PCI webpage for authors.
We have signed up to a PLOS Flat Fee Arrangement from 1 April 2021 until December 2023. This is a prepay arrangement which means that publication fees for open access will be automatically covered by the flat fee agreement for the following 11 titles: PLOS ONE, PLOS Computational Biology, PLOS Pathogens, PLOS Genetics, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, PLOS Digital Health, PLOS Climate, PLOS Water, PLOS Global Public Health, and two new journals: PLOS Mental Health and PLOS Complex Systems.
For 2023 we have signed up to a Community Action Publishing agreement with PLOS which includes cost-free publishing for Bath corresponding authors in PLOS Medicine, PLOS Biology and PLOS Sustainability and Transformation.
To be eligible for full payment of publication fees, the corresponding author must be affiliated with the University of Bath. Please ensure that you use your University of Bath email address and identify your affiliation in the publisher submission system. Articles will be automatically published with a with a CC-BY licence ; PLOS articles are syndicated to PubMed Central/Europe PMC and PLOS requires data sharing where not subject to legal or ethical restrictions. PLOS is a non-profit, fully open access publisher.
We have signed up to a JISC Read & Publish agreement 2022 with the National Academy of Sciences which allows all University of Bath corresponding authors to publish open access with a CC-BY licence in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences). When you submit to the journal, ensure that you are listed as the corresponding author, with a Bath affiliation and e-mail address entered into the publisher’s submission system. You will receive an e-mail confirming that the paper will be published open access under the CC-BY licence without any additional publicataion fees.
Our agreement with Portland Press allows all University of Bath corresponding authors to publish open access with a CC-BY licence in Portland Press's five subscription and two fully open access journals: Biochemical Journal, Biochemical Society Transactions, Bioscience Reports, Clinical Science, Essays in Biochemistry, Emerging Topics in Life Sciences, and Neuronal Signalling. When you submit to the journal, ensure that you are listed as the corresponding author, with a Bath affiliation and e-mail address entered into the publisher’s submission system. You will receive an e-mail confirming that the paper will be published open access under the CC-BY licence without any additional fees.
We are participating in RCGP Journals Transitional Publish Agreement from Jan 2023 until end of Dec 2024.
The agreement applies to research articles accepted for publication between 7 January 2023 and 31 Dec 2024. It provides open access publishing for Bath corresponding authors at no extra cost in the RCGP's flagship journal, British Journal of General Practice (hybrid) and BJGP Open (fully open access).
Please use your University of Bath affiliation and email address during the submission process to ensure your article is included, and select the CC BY licence (rather than CC BY-NC or CC BY-ND).
We have A ‘Read & Publish’ transitional agreement for the Royal Society’s full journals package of 8 hybrid and 2 open access journals, including unlimited read access and open access publishing for University of Bath corresponding authors. Journals included are: : Biology Letters, Interface Focus, Journal of the Royal Society Interface, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Open Biology, and Royal Society Open Science. Open to all Bath corresponding authors. When you submit, please use your University of Bath email address and affiliation and include your ORCID. You will be asked to confirm the publication licence: please make sure to select the CC-BY (Creative Commons Attribution) licence.
The Royal Society of Chemistry publishes journals in chemical science subjects, multidisciplinary studies and related disciplines, including engineering and nanotech. If you are the corresponding author for an article in an RSC hybrid journal then, as a member of the University of Bath, you will not have to pay open access article processing charges. You simply need to tell the RSC that you wish the article to be made open access with a CC-BY licence . This is because the library have signed up to a 'Read and Publish' agreement with the RSC. This transformative open access agreement means that the Library have paid an annual amount to the publisher to cover both our online subscription to RSC journals and the open access publishing fees for University of Bath corresponding authors. This waiver of open access fees applies to all RSC hybrid (subscription) journals except: Chemical Science, RSC Advances, Nanoscale Advances, RSC Chemical Biology, Materials Advances and Chemistry Education Research and Practice (CERP). Please use your University of Bath email address on all submissions and select the CC-BY licence when prompted. Note that RSC fully open access journals are not included in this agreement. Please apply for funding using our APC Request form
We have signed a Read & Publish agreement for unlimited open access publishing in Sage's subscription journals. In addition, authors publishing in any of Sage's fully open access journals will receive a 20% discount on the open access article processing charge. All University of Bath corresponding authors can publish open access in almost all Sage, IMechE and RSM subscription journals. This encompasses original research papers, review papers, brief communications, short reports and case studies. Book reviews, editorials, abstracts and news items are excluded. A list of journals included in this deal can be found here . On submission to the journal, please ensure that you are listed as the corresponding author and provide your University of Bath affiliation and email address. This enables Sage to identify your paper as eligible for open access. The Library OA team will receive a request to approve the article for funding. Note: if you are not correctly identified as the corresponding author, Sage may not be able to convert your article to open access later. Once approved, Sage will inform co-authors that the article can be published open access at no additional cost. Within 14 days, one author must confirm that the authors agree to publish open access, and choose a licence. If the funder of the paper requires a CC-BY licence, please ensure that you select it. Most funders require CC-BY and this is our recommended choice of licence for OA papers.
Sage, IMechE and RSM papers in gold (fully open access) journals are eligible for a 20% discount on standard rates. Please use our online APC request form to apply for funding. University of Bath’s normal eligibility criteria apply.
SciPost is a ‘diamond’ open access and non-profit organisation publishing open access articles in physics, astronomy and chemistry that is free for authors and readers.
Financial support is provided by about 80 university libraries and other academic organisations, including the University of Bath (through JISC’s Open Access Community Framework).
SciPost is governed by open science principles, with scientists in charge, and publishes eleven journals.
Further information available here.
We have signed up to the Society for Neuroscience Read & Publish Pilot 2023. This offers open access publishing with CC BY licence in the Journal of Neuroscience for University of Bath corresponding authors from 1 Jan 2023, at no additional cost. Eligible articles will deposited in Europe PubMed Central on behalf of authors.
Please use your University of Bath affiliation and email address on submission and select the open access publishing option and CC BY licence on acceptance.
The University has signed an add-on to its subscription package with SPIE that provides unlimited open access publishing for University of Bath corresponding authors of research and review articles in participating journals - including SPIE's hybrid Author choice and fully open access journals. Covers articles submitted during the subscription year: 1 Sep 2022 to 31 Aug 2023.
Note that the agreement does not cover page/colour charges in Proceedings (if charged).
Please use your University of Bath affiliation and email address on submission and select the open access publishing option and CC BY licence on acceptance.
Our prepay agreement for Biomed Central (BMC) and SpringerOpen now includes Palgrave and Nature Research fully open access journals. Corresponding authors should ensure that their University of Bath affiliation and email address are entered into the publisher's submission system and your request will be sent to the open access team for approval.
We have signed up to a JISC Read & Publish deal with Taylor & Francis from April 2021. If you are the corresponding author for a research article in a Taylor and Francis 'Open Select' hybrid journal see list: here in any subject area then, as a member of the University of Bath, you are eligible for open access publishing with CC-BY licence . Please use your University of Bath email address on all submissions and select the CC-BY licence when prompted. Note that a number of Taylor & Francis journals are excluded – notably those that charge an Article Processing Charge of over £3000 (known as Premium journals).
We also have a pre-payment account with Taylor and Francis which covers APCs in journals outside of the Read & Publish deal. This is available to all Bath corresponding authors; payment will be via invoice. Please use our online APC request form - available from the link above - to apply for funding.
We have a JISC Read & Publish agreement with Wiley which includes most of their hybrid and fully open access journals. It also includes the Hindawi portfolio of fully open access journals.
The agreement is available to Bath-affiliated authors who have been designated on the paper as 'Responsible Corresponding Author'. It provides open access publishing with a CC-BY licence of primary research and non-commissioned review articles in Wiley’s hybrid OnlineOpen journals and their fully gold open access journals, at no further charge to the author.
You will need to select the institutional open access option on Wiley's Author Services platform at the submission stage for fully gold journals or at the acceptance stage for hybrid journals. Please use your University of Bath affiliation and email address on all submissions. You will also need to provide details of any funders acknowledged in your work. Your request will be sent to our dashboard for assessment by the Open Access team.
A list of Wiley’s fully gold journals included in the deal can be found here . If you are submitting to a Wiley OnlineOpen hybrid (subscription) journal, please check its eligibility via the Bath Journal Search tool above.
Further information about the deal can be found here
For journals not included in this list, there is a 25% discount on the APC. Please make a request via our APC form.
All queries about publishing open access in Wiley's journals should be addressed to: openaccess@bath.ac.uk