Read & Publish Agreements for 2024

The Library is increasing its support of open access publishing by supporting additional Read and Publish agreements with major scholarly publishers including Nature, British Medical Journal (BMJ) and American Psychological Association.

Through Read and Publish agreements, the Library bundles subscription costs with open access publishing costs. This enables researchers to access important research and also publish their work without paying the usual open access charges (commonly known as Article Publishing Charges, or APCs). These fees, which can cost up to $15,000 per article, can be prohibitive to researchers, especially early career researchers who may not have funding.

Through the Library’s Read and Publish agreements, we save academics hundreds of thousands of dollars each year and enable University of Sydney research to be read more broadly. In 2023, the Library provided $4 million in savings to researchers, faculties and schools.

In addition to continuing the 14 Read and Publish agreements we had in 2023, the Library has substantially increased the number of agreements to 26 in 2024. Researchers can now publish open access in more than 13,000 scholarly journals without paying an APC.

Most of our Read and Publish agreements are negotiated through the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL), however there are four significant agreements we have licensed independently.

The most significant is Nature, one of the world's most cited scientific journals, also considered one of the most reputable and prestigious scientific journals in the world. We are one of just three Australian universities to have an agreement with Nature Portfolio journals.

Also new in 2024, articles can now be published in journals by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). 

We are also the first and only university in Australia to have a publishing agreement with the BMJ, another new addition for 2024. “The new Read & Publish agreement with BMJ helps us share the results of our research worldwide” said Philip Kent, as quoted in a press release citing the significance of this new agreement.

In just the past few weeks, we have already approved two original research articles submitted in Nature and three for BMJ. Professor James Chong from the Faculty of Medicine and Health, the first recipient of an APC-funded article published in Nature Cardiovascular Health says, “these agreements are excellent for researchers who often find publication costs difficult to cover. This is especially true for high impact journals and open-access agreements.”  

The complete list of Read & Publish agreements and eligible title list are published on the Read and Publish Agreements page on the Library website.