For all Trinity researchers, it is important to note that Article Processing Charges (APCs) for Elsevier have now been exhausted and no further article charges will be covered until 1 January 2025.

For context, Trinity College Dublin participates in 27 Transformative Agreements with scholarly publishers, largely negotiated via the IReL consortium. 

Their aim is to move scholarly publishing from a subscription-based model (pay to access/read) to a payment to publish (in open access) model. Most of these agreements are based on the payment of Article Processing Charges (APCs). The agreements Trinity currently participate in are listed on the IReL website.

These agreements do not cover publishers’ full journal portfolios, and some do not cover 100% of the publications in the journals included by researchers from the participating institutions. 

This can lead to frustrating situations for researchers facing publishing fees where they previously did not (while quotas were still full). 

The following open access agreements have less than 100% coverage within the included journals:

  • Wiley (fully-oa ‘gold’ journals): quota spent as of August 2024
  • Taylor & Francis: quota spent as of end of August 2024
  • Springer Nature (Springer Compact): quota spent as of September 2024
  • Elsevier (Science Direct): quota spent as of 14 October 2024
  • Optica Publishing Group, OPG: covered to 30 October 2024 only
  • Royal Society of Chemistry, RSC: projected to cover the full year
  • Wiley (hybrid journals): projected to cover the full year
  • Elsevier (Cell Press hybrid journals): projected to cover the full year

More details and updates are available on the Library’s LibGuide on the topic.

The 2025 allocations will become available in January. IReL and the Library will push for 100% coverage in negotiations for new agreements – though there is no guarantee of achieving this. It is therefore best to plan, as far as possible, for the scenario that some limited quotas will remain in place with annual cut-off points in September/October.  Remember, too, Trinity authors are required to deposit their scholarly articles in TARA (via ‘green’ open access), regardless of the open or closed status of the journal. 

For practical advice see our TARA LibGuide. 

If any Trinity researcher has any further queries, please contact: publisherapproval@tcd.ie.