Skip to main content

Open Access Publisher Agreements and Journal Discounts

The UMD Libraries participates in a number of open access publisher agreements and journal discounts that are available to UMD authors. To check if a journal you are interested in is covered under one of our agreements, or to browse what journals are currently covered by a publisher, please use our new search tool SciFree.

Publisher Agreements

For more information on these agreements, including links to individual publishers author workflows, please visit the OA Publishing Agreement Libguide. To check if a journal you are interested in is covered under one of our agreements, or to browse what journals are currently covered by a publisher, please use our new search tool SciFree.  Please contact Alex Dodd, Continuing Resources Librarian, at libr-contresc@umd.edu for questions or more information on participating in the following open access publisher agreements.

ACM - Association for Computer Machinery

UMD and ACM’s three-year agreement is intended to facilitate a transition to open access by allowing UMD Affiliated Corresponding Authors to publish accepted eligible articles in ACM’s entire digital library of  peer-reviewed scholarly publications on an Open Access basis with no fee charged to them while also offering the option to retain copyright in their work. Publications included in this deal include research articles, review articles and conference or proceedings papers, and any other article types in the Licensed Materials for which ACM would otherwise charge an Article Processing Charge (APC).

Cambridge University Press Agreement

UMD Libraries entered into a cost neutral, three-year “Read and Publish” agreement with Cambridge University Press (CUP) in collaboration with our consortial partner NERL effective 1 January 2022. Under this CUP Read and Publish agreement, UMD authors may publish articles as gold Open Access without paying an Article Processing Charge (APC).

IOP - Institute of Physics

UMD has entered into a three-year transformative agreement with IOP through the BTAA beginning January 2023. The deal covers 74 IOP titles. Articles published in Society journals where the corresponding author is from UMD will be published Open Access with a CC BY 4.0 license. Publications included in this deal include research articles, special issue papers, reviews, and letters for which IOP would otherwise charge an Article Processing Charge.

Microbiology Society

UMD has entered into a two-year Publish and Read agreement with Microbiology Society through the BTAA covering all of the Society’s six journals including Microbiology, Journal of General Virology, Journal of Medical Microbiology, Microbial Genomics, International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology and Access Microbiology where any article published in Society journals where the corresponding author is from UMD will be published Open Access with a CC BY license by default. Additionally, the deal provides access to the entire archive of Society content, back to 1947.

Public Library of Science (PLOS)

UMD has entered into a three-year transformative agreement with PLOS through the BTAA beginning January 2022. Article processing fees for PLOS Biology and PLOS Medicine are waived for corresponding authors from BTAA institutions. A 25% discount will be applied to publication fees where one or more of the contributing authors are affiliated with a BTAA institution, but the corresponding author is not.

The Royal Society

UMD and The Royal Society’s one-year agreement covers publishing in ten of RS’ 10 peer-reviewed, high-impact scientific journals covering all of science: Philosophical Transactions A&B, Proceedings A&B, Interface, Interface Focus, Biology Letters, Open Biology, Open Science, and Notes & Records. The agreement also provides access to content from all RS journals since 1665.

Wiley Agreement

In collaboration with Wiley and the BTAA, we have signed a three-year, cost neutral contract extension with Wiley in collaboration with the BTAA. This agreement extends our existing Wiley Online Library Database Model contract and Open Access (OA) option, by expanding APC coverage to all Wiley titles, as opposed to hybrid-only titles, as was the case with the 2022 agreement.


Journal Discounts

MDPI logo

Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI)

Authors will receive a 10% discount on the article processing charges for accepted articles in MDPI journals. 

Read More
JAFSCD logo

Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development (JAFSCD)

Authors who have a paper accepted in the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development (JAFSCD) will receive a waiver of the $500 article processing charge.

Read More
Back to Top