Transformative Agreements

The Royal Society launched transformative agreements to begin from 1 January 2021. These agreements allow researchers to publish with no APC fee at the point of use.

In addition to these agreements APC waivers are available for Royal Society Open Science and Open Biology for member countries of Research4Life. Free access to paywalled articles is available in over 100 countries.

Our standard transformative model is Read & Publish but we are also running some pilot projects structured in a different way. You can use the list of institutions below to see if you can publish with us at no cost. If you have any questions please get in touch: publishing@royalsociety.org.

Max Planck Institutions Publish and Read Pilot
Corresponding authors at any Max Planck institution are eligible to publish open access and for the APC to be covered centrally by Max Planck Digital Library. This applies to all articles submitted between 1 January and 31 December.

University of California shared funding model
Corresponding authors at the nine eligible UC institutions can publish open access and the APC will be split between the UC library and the author where they have funding. This applies to all articles accepted between 1 January and 31 December.

Read & Publish agreements
Read & Publish agreements enable corresponding authors to publish papers as open access without paying an article processing charge as the charges are covered by their library. If your institution is listed below you can publish open access with us for no fee.

For CAUL institutions in Australia and New Zealand, the Read & Publish agreement applies to all articles accepted between 1 January and 31 December of the year the agreement is in place. 

For IReL institutions in the Republic of Ireland, the Read & Publish agreement applies to all articles published between 1 January and 31 December of the year the agreement is in place.

All other Read & Publish agreements apply to all articles submitted between 1 January and 31 December of the year the agreement is in place.

Agreements for 2021:

If you are an author with a question about Read & Publish please email publishing@royalsociety.org.

If you are a librarian with a question about Read & Publish please email access@royalsociety.org.

If you are not covered by a transformative agreement you may still be eligible for help with APC costs through open access membership.