Since joining the first DEAL contract with Wiley in 2019, the University Library has consistently pursued the goal of converting existing journal contracts from read-only access to combined reading and publication rights. This is intended to support the transformation of academic publishing to open access with the local possibilities. From 2025, two more of these so-called transformation or ‘Read & Publish’ contracts will be added to the University Library's portfolio - bringing the total number to 20 contracts.
A contract with Springer Nature, which runs until 2028, supplements the existing DEAL agreement with reading access to all 64 Nature-branded journals. Corresponding authors at Leipzig University can publish their research articles (review articles/journals are not part of the publication component) in the Nature-branded hybrid journals under a CC-BY licence in open access. The article costs are settled centrally via our licence fees. Further information on the process can be found in the publisher's Author Guide.
The contract for 9 journals of the American Physical Society (APS), which also runs until 2028, opens up reading access and the possibility for corresponding authors of the university to publish free of charge with the standard CC-BY licence in Open Access.
All essential information on these and our other contracts can be found on the Open Science Office website. If you have any questions, simply contact: openscience@ub.uni-leipzig.de.