Coverage of open access publication fees under Read & Publish agreements

Certain contracts signed with scientific journal publishers for access to content, negotiated for higher education and research establishments by the Couperin consortium, now include an open access publication dimension.
Publication costs are therefore borne directly by the institutions under these agreements.
In order to benefit from these Article Processing charges, which are partially or fully prepaid, the author of the article must be affiliated to the subscribing institution when the article is submitted.
Here is a table summarising the publishers with a subscription contract with Sorbonne Université offering this type of prepayment.

Published on 4/01/2021 - Updated on 16/01/2026

URGENT INFORMATION

For Sorbonne University authors publishing under the Wiley Read and Publish agreement. The 2022-2025 agreement has ended and the stock of publishing rights has been used up before the end of the calendar year.

- For articles submitted to hybrid journals that were not eligible for the agreement in 2025, APCs will have to be paid by the laboratory or the articles will have to be published in closed access.

- For articles submitted to full gold open access journals that have not yet been accepted, or whose eligibility has not been validated in the dashboard (publication rights exhausted at that time, CC-BY license could not be updated and/or signed by the author, etc.), another means of financing the APC than that provided for in the agreement must be found. It is also possible to request the withdrawal of the article in order to submit it to a Wiley hybrid journal (without any guarantee of a shortened review process) or to a journal from another publisher."

Publishers	Disciplines	Journals	Discount	Information
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)	Computing	All journals (hybrid and gold OA) and ACM conferences	Prepaid by the BSU	Go to page
Cambridge University Press (CUP)	All disciplines	Full collection (403 journals)	Prepaid by the BSU	Go to page
EDP Sciences	Sciences	30 journals	Prepaid by the BSU	Go to page
Elsevier	All disciplines	Complete Freedom Collection, Bibliothèque Médicale Française, Cell Press journals, Lancet	-Prepaid by the BSU (subject to annual consortium stock) for eligible journals from CFC and BMF -10% per article for non eligible journals (including Cell Press et Lancet journals) and for eligible journals once the consortium stock limit is exceeded	Go to page
Institute of Physics (IoP)	Mostly physics	55 hybrid journals +21 full OA journals	Prepaid by the BSU	Go to page
IWA Publishing	Geosciences	14 journals from IWA water package	Prepaid by the BSU	Go to page Publisher's validation journal made after profesionnal email sorbonne-universite.fr
Wiley	All disciplines	Hybrid journals only	Publication prepaid by the BSU (hybrid journals only). Note: for other open access journals (gold journals), a 10% discount has been negotiated with the publisher	Go to page

Contact at the Sorbonne University Library : publications@sorbonne-universite.fr

Choice of licence

In the case of publication fees prepaid by the university, we ask you to choose the CC-BY licence. A publication is only open access if it includes an open licence, such as the Creative Commons licences. The CC-BY licence is the most flexible licence and is recommended by research funders such as Horizon Europe and the ANR. Publication under a CC-BY licence allows you to be recognised as the author and gives your readers permission to re-use your work.

For more details

Submission to HAL

Finally, it is also recommended to deposit the full text in HAL, in accordance with the commitments made in the Sorbonne University charter for open access to publications.
For assistance with submitting to HAL, contact hal@sorbonne-universite.fr or visit the HAL office on Tuesdays from 2pm to 3pm.

Publishing free of charge in the diamond format

Open access publication is not always synonymous with publication costs, since a number of journals charge neither authors nor readers. These are known as ‘diamond’ journals.
Looking for a journal with no publication fees? Use the directory of open access journals (DOAJ): the advanced search allows you to filter for journals ‘Without article processing charges (APCs)’ (filter to be ticked on the left) https://www.doaj.org/
You can also consult the list of ‘diamond’ journals, which is the result of a study commissioned in 2020/2021 by research funders within cOAlition S. This list will continue to be updated: https://tinyurl.com/diamond-journals