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Scholarly Communications@TCU: Transformative Agreements

Information about scholarly publishing and open access issues at TCU

Open Access Transformative Agreements

The TCU Library is excited to announce that it has signed some innovative agreements with scholarly publishers, allowing TCU authors to make their journal articles freely available to the world at no cost or at a discount. This expands the reach and influence of our research and creative scholarship, and increases equity by reducing barriers for readers worldwide to access TCU's scholarship. These types of agreements are known as Transformative Agreements.

Please review the publishers that have transformative agreements with TCU below.

Questions? Email libscholarlycommunication@tcu.edu.

ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

TCU authors publishing articles in ACM conferences, journals, and magazines may make their article Open Access without the need to pay an Article Processing Charge. Details:

  • Corresponding Author must be a current TCU faculty, staff, or student. When submitting your manuscript, select TCU as your affiliation and use your TCU email address.
  • Nearly all ACM conferences, journals, and magazines are eligible, with some exclusions. Find more info here: https://libraries.acm.org/subscriptions-access/publications-eligible-for-oa
  • There is no limit on the number of articles that may be published under this agreement.

Company of Biologists

TCU authors publishing articles in Company of Biologists journals may make their article Open Access without the need to pay an Article Processing Charge. Details:

  • Corresponding Author must be a TCU student, or paid faculty or staff
  • When submitting your manuscript, select TCU as your affiliation and use your TCU email address.
  • Includes all journals published by the Company of Biologists: https://www.biologists.com/
  • There is no limit on the number of articles that may be published under this agreement.

Elsevier / ScienceDirect

TCU authors publishing articles in Elsevier (also known as ScienceDirect) journals may make their article Open Access at a discounted rate of 10-15% off the article processing charge (APC). Includes most, but not all Elsevier journals.

Details:

  • Corresponding Author must be a TCU student, or paid faculty or staff
  • When submitting your manuscript, select TCU as your affiliation and use your TCU email address.
  • Includes most, but not all Elsevier journals. To check eligibility, use this website: https://agreements.journals.elsevier.com/tcu.
  • Journals that are fully open access have an APC discount of 10%. Journals that are partially open access, sometimes called "hybrid" open access have an APC discount of 15%.
  • There is no limit on the number of articles that may be published under this agreement.

Institute of Physics

TCU authors publishing articles in Institute of Physics (IOP) journals may make their article Open Access without the need to pay an Article Processing Charge. Details:

  • Corresponding Author must be a TCU student, or paid faculty or staff
  • When submitting your manuscript, select TCU as your affiliation and use your TCU email address.
  • Includes most, but not all journals published by IOP. Visit this site https://iopp.chronoshub.io/ and enter Texas Christian University as the institution to see a list of IOP journals and information about each specific journal's terms.
  • There is no limit on the number of articles that may be published under this agreement.

Oxford University Press

TCU authors publishing articles in Oxford University Press journals may make their article Open Access with a discounted or waived Article Processing Charge. This agreement between TCU and Oxford University Press and a consortium of other libraries covers most, but not all Oxford UP journals. Details:

  • Corresponding author must be a TCU student or paid faculty or staff. When submitting your manuscript, select TCU as your affiliation and use your TCU email address. 
  • View the Guide for authors for more information on how to use this funding opportunity.
  • The Oxford UP agreement treats Hybrid OA journals and Fully OA journals differently:
    • Hybrid OA Journals: List of hybrid journals covered. The agreement starts by paying $1,000 towards the APC. Then, if you do not have grant funds, you can request coverage of the entire APC. If you do have grant funds, you are expected to pay the amount over $1,000 with grant funding.
    • Fully OA journals: List of fully OA journals covered. The agreement pays $750 towards the APC. Assuming the journal meets the criteria of the TCU Open Access Fund, you may request payment of the remainder there.
  • Articles must be accepted for publication between February 4, 2025 and December 31, 2028.
  • All funding is subject to approval. Funding amounts subject to change.
  • There is an unlimited number of funding opportunities in this agreement.

Royal Society of Chemistry

TCU authors publishing articles in Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) journals may make their article Open Access at a discounted rate 15% off the article processing charge (APC). Includes most, but not all RSC journals. Details:

  • Corresponding author must be a TCU student or paid faculty or staff.
  • When submitting your manuscript, select TCU as your affiliation and use your TCU email address.
  • There is no limit on the number of articles that may be published under this agreement.
  • Includes nearly all RSC journals. Visit https://rsc.chronoshub.io/ to see the specifics of which journals are included.

Wiley

TCU authors publishing articles in Wiley journals may make their article Open Access without the need to pay an Article Processing Charge. Details: