Transformative Agreements: Home

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 list of publishers that have transformative agreements with TCU.

Looking for other open access support besides transformative agreements? Please check out all of our OA support options.

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.

TCU authors publishing in Cambridge University Press journals may make their article Open Access without the need to pay an Article Processing Charge.

• Corresponding Author must be a TCU student, or paid faculty or staff. When submitting your manuscript, select TCU as your affiliation.
• Must be original research -- eligible article types are research articles, review articles, rapid communications, brief reports and case reports.
• When your article is accepted, choose the Gold Open Access option in your publishing agreement form and select a Creative Commons License.
• Includes nearly all journals published by Cambridge University Press. For the full list, go to https://www.cambridge.org/core/eligibility-checker and select Texas Christian University.
• There is no limit on the number of articles that may be published under this agreement.

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.

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.
• The Elsevier agreement treats Hybrid OA journals and Fully OA journals differently:
  • Hybrid OA Journals: APC discount of 15%.
  • Fully OA Journals: APC discount of 10%. For fully OA journals that meet the qualifications for the TCU OA Fund, you may also apply to have the remainder of the fee covered by the fund.
• There is no limit on the number of articles that may be published under this agreement.

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.

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 is possible because of an agreement between TCU, Oxford, and the SCELC library consortium. 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 SCELC's information page for more guidance on how to use this funding opportunity.
• Includes almost all Oxford journals. See the list of journals covered.
• The Oxford agreement treats hybrid OA journals and fully OA journals differently:
  • Hybrid OA journals: The agreement starts by paying $1,000 towards the APC. 
    • Then, if you do not have grant funds available, you can request coverage of the entire APC. We project that most requests would be approved.
    • If you do have grant funds available, you are expected to pay the remainder over $1,000 with grant funding.
  • Fully OA journals: The agreement pays $750 towards the APC. For fully OA journals that also meet the qualifications for the TCU OA Fund, you may apply to have the remainder of the fee covered by the fund. 
• 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.

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.
• Includes both hybrid and fully OA journals. For fully OA journals that meet the qualifications for the TCU OA Fund, you may also apply to have the remainder of the fee covered by the fund.

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

• Responsible 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.
• TCU authors may collectively publish up to 60 articles without any Article Processing Charge during the calendar year.
• Includes nearly all Wiley journals. Journals that appear on at least one of the spreadsheets below are included:
  • Traditional/Hybrid journals: https://authorservices.wiley.com/asset/Wiley-Journal-APCs-OnlineOpen.xlsx
  • Fully Open Access journals: https://authorservices.wiley.com/asset/Wiley-Journal-APCs-Open-Access.xlsx

If you have questions, please contact libscholarlycommunication@tcu.edu. We're happy to help!