Read and publish agreements

Read and publish agreements: benefits and limits

Centrale Lyon’s library subscribes to journals from major scientific publishers on behalf of the entire Centrale Lyon community. Subscription terms are negotiated nationally by the Couperin consortium.

Some agreements include, in addition to access to published articles, the possibility to publish open access in some or all of the publishers’ journals without paying Article Processing Charges (APCs) — generally within the limits of a national quota of articles (these are known as "Read & Publish" agreements). Once this quota is exhausted, the APC waiver no longer applies.

This is not truly “free” publishing, as the APCs are covered upfront and included in the subscription fees. This model still falls within an author-pays system, which raises concerns within the current scientific publishing ecosystem (see here or here for example). It is important to remember that there are alternatives to paying to publish.
Researchers may choose to publish in a subscription-based journal and deposit the accepted manuscript in HAL after a six-month embargo. If immediate open access is required (e.g. for ANR or ERC-funded projects), the "rights retention strategy" can be applied.

APC Coverage Workflow

The workflow for APC coverage is similar across publishers:

Once the article is accepted:

• The corresponding author selects their affiliated institution...
• ...and chooses either open access or subscription-based publication (for hybrid journals)
• If the institution is a subscriber, the request is validated by the affiliated institution (by the library at Centrale Lyon)

List of current Read and Publish agreements at Centrale Lyon

At Centrale Lyon, Read and Publish agreements exist with Elsevier, Springer, IOP, Cambridge and Wiley. The table below summarizes the terms of these agreements.