EHU researchers have enjoyed fee-free open access publishing with Wiley since March. This post reports on a temporary ‘lever’ being applied to the deal, restricting researchers’ ability to publish open access.

A text-based slide describing a change to the Wiley open access deal. The text reads, "Success so far Negotiated through Jisc, Edge Hill and other UK universities have had a open access (OA) deal in place with Wiley since March. The arrangement is rapidly opening up access to UK research articles, and nationally Jisc reports that compared with 2019 there has been an 82% increase in OA Wiley articles. The deal means no processing fees for publishing research articles OA in both hybrid and fully OA Wiley journals - EHU researchers have saved >£10000 in APCs so far. A ‘lever’ in the deal The deal though, is a victim of its own success. 97% of UK authors have chosen to publish their journal articles OA, more than projected. As a result, the fund for this is running low, so from 12 October-31 December 2020, only funded* research can benefit from the scheme. This exercises a ‘lever’ in deal, to be applied by Wiley when the cost of the deal is set to exceed the fund. The deal resumes in January 2021."

Announced in March, the deal has enabled UK-based researchers to publish research articles in Wiley academic journals without facing open access charges.

To date, seven articles have been published by Edge Hill researchers through this arrangement, and ₤10,226 has been waived. However, since the deal has been hugely popular with UK researchers, a limit or ‘cap’ is set to be reached ahead of schedule – this determines how many articles can benefit.

As a result, only research funded by certain funders will be eligible for the deal from 12 October. The funders are: Wellcome, UKRI, Blood Cancer UK, British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Parkinson’s UK and Versus Arthritis.

Funds will be replenished for the start of 2021 so researchers can resume using the deal as normal from then. Jisc has provided more deals here: https://www.jisc.ac.uk/blog/the-uk-wiley-read-and-publish-agreement-nine-months-on-25-sep-2020#

Open access options for researchers

If you had planned to use the deal for publishing your next journal article, but would now like to look into other options, please see our ‘Open access options for researchers’ webpage: https://go.edgehill.ac.uk/display/ls/Open+access+options+for+researchers

Please email [email protected] if you would like to discuss this further.