A Springer open access agreement lets eligible corresponding authors publish gold open access in Springer Nature’s hybrid or fully-OA journals with an institution covering some or all of the article processing charge (APC). ACS achieves the same outcome through Read and Publish or Read and Green agreements, while IEEE combines institutional prepaid-APC deals with its dedicated IEEE Access journal and Transformative Journal status for hybrid titles. All three routes can satisfy Plan S — but eligibility rules, licence terms and embargo conditions differ enough that research-office staff need a publisher-by-publisher checklist before advising an author.
In practical terms, an open access agreement is a contract between a publisher and an institution or consortium — often negotiated centrally, as Jisc does for UK higher education — that converts subscription spend into APC coverage so corresponding authors can publish gold open access without an individual invoice.
What is an open access agreement, and why does the route matter for Plan S?
An open access agreement is a negotiated contract, usually between a publisher and a national consortium or individual institution, that pre-pays or discounts the APC an author would otherwise owe. cOAlition S’s Plan S has required, since 1 January 2021, that publications from participating funders be openly available immediately on publication under a CC BY licence (or equivalent), published in a compliant journal, platform, or repository.
- Gold OA in a fully open access journal — automatically compliant.
- Gold OA in a hybrid journal — compliant only if the journal is covered by a transformative agreement or holds Transformative Journal status.
- Green OA via immediate repository deposit under the cOAlition S Rights Retention Strategy (RRS) — compliant regardless of the publisher’s own licence, provided the funder mandate applies.
Because compliance hinges on which of these three routes a specific journal supports, the practical question for research-office staff is not “does this publisher offer open access?” but “which agreement, if any, covers this journal for this author’s institution?”
How does the Springer open access agreement work?
Springer Nature’s transformative agreements bundle subscription reading access with OA publishing rights across the Springer, Nature, BMC, Palgrave and Adis imprints. Coverage under a given agreement takes one of three forms, according to Springer Nature’s own open access agreements page: full APC coverage, a percentage discount, or a fixed-price contribution.
In the UK, these deals are negotiated centrally through Jisc on behalf of participating institutions, which removes the need for individual authors to seek a quote. Eligibility is checked automatically during the publishing workflow once an article is accepted, based on the corresponding author’s institutional affiliation at submission — not at acceptance.
- Hybrid journals under a transformative agreement: gold OA with CC BY licensing, Plan S compliant where the agreement is registered.
- Fully OA journals: gold OA with CC BY licensing, always Plan S compliant regardless of any agreement.
- No agreement in place: authors can still pay an individual APC or use the green RRS route.
How does the ACS Journal Publishing Agreement compare?
The ACS Journal Publishing Agreement (JPA) is the contract every author signs upon acceptance, governing copyright, reuse and publication terms — it is separate from, and required regardless of, any institutional OA agreement. ACS layers two distinct institutional models on top of the JPA: Read and Publish, which covers the APC directly, and Read and Green, which instead grants authors the right to immediately self-archive their accepted manuscript.
ACS introduced an Article Development Charge for authors using the zero-embargo green deposit route in hybrid journals in September 2023, meaning “green” is no longer necessarily free even where it remains immediate. Institutions and authors can check current coverage through ACS’s own institutional lookup tool at acsopenscience.org, since Read and Publish and Read and Green agreements are not interchangeable and eligibility is set per institution.
| ACS route | Mechanism | Author cost |
|---|---|---|
| Gold OA (no agreement) | Standard APC paid by author/institution | Full APC |
| Read and Publish | Institutional agreement covers APC | Free to author, capped by agreement volume |
| Read and Green (zero-embargo) | Immediate self-archiving under agreement | Article Development Charge (from Sept 2023) |
What are IEEE Access’s submission terms and IEEE’s Transformative Journal status?
IEEE Access is IEEE’s dedicated multidisciplinary journal, fully open access under a CC BY licence since its 2013 launch, and every accepted article carries a mandatory APC — there is no subscription “hybrid” option within the title itself. IEEE Access’s own author guidance states the submission-to-publication process typically takes four to six weeks, and requires a Word or LaTeX source file plus a matching PDF, each under 40 MB, submitted through the IEEE Author Portal.
Separately, IEEE committed more than 160 of its hybrid journals to Transformative Journal (TJ) status under Plan S in 2023, meaning cOAlition S-funded authors can publish gold OA in those hybrid titles and remain compliant, provided their institution has (or the author pays for) the associated APC coverage. Institutional open access agreements with IEEE typically operate as prepaid APC blocks rather than a single unified “Read and Publish” brand name.
- IEEE Access: always gold OA, always Plan S compliant, APC payable on every acceptance.
- Transformative Journal hybrid titles: gold OA compliant only for the funding period IEEE maintains TJ status.
- Standard hybrid journals without TJ status or an institutional agreement: green RRS deposit is the fallback compliance route.
Which route actually satisfies Plan S for your target journal?
Comparing the three publishers side by side shows that “gold via agreement” is the fastest compliant route everywhere, but the fallback differs: ACS’s green route now carries a charge, while the cOAlition S Rights Retention Strategy remains a genuinely cost-free fallback across all three publishers when a compliant agreement is not available.
| Publisher | Primary agreement type | Licence on acceptance | Zero-cost fallback route |
|---|---|---|---|
| Springer Nature | Transformative Agreement (Jisc-negotiated in the UK) | CC BY | Green RRS deposit |
| ACS | Read and Publish / Read and Green | CC BY | Green RRS deposit (Read and Green now carries an Article Development Charge) |
| IEEE | Institutional APC agreement + Transformative Journal status | CC BY | Green RRS deposit |
For a specific target journal, the check sequence is the same regardless of publisher: confirm the journal is fully OA (automatic compliance); if hybrid, confirm it sits under a transformative agreement or Transformative Journal designation the author’s institution participates in; if neither applies, use the Rights Retention Strategy to deposit the accepted manuscript immediately with a CC BY licence attached to the funder-mandated version.
Common questions
What is an open access agreement?
An open access agreement is a contract between a publisher and an institution or consortium that shifts payment from individual subscriptions or per-article APCs to a bundled arrangement, letting affiliated corresponding authors publish gold open access at no direct cost, or at a fixed discounted rate.
What licence does Springer Nature use for open access articles?
Springer Nature’s open access articles are typically published under a CC BY licence, permitting reuse with attribution; some journals also offer CC BY-NC-ND, which restricts commercial re-use and derivative works and is generally not Plan S compliant.
What is the ACS Journal Publishing Agreement?
The ACS Journal Publishing Agreement (JPA) is the copyright and reuse contract every author completes at acceptance, independent of institutional funding arrangements; it governs how the article may be used and shared and applies whether or not an institutional Read and Publish agreement covers the APC.
Implications for research-office staff
Advising an author correctly requires checking the specific journal against the specific institutional agreement, not the publisher’s brand name in general. A journal being “with Springer” or “an ACS title” says nothing about compliance on its own.
- Verify the target journal’s OA status (fully OA, hybrid-with-agreement, or hybrid-without-agreement) before submission, not after acceptance.
- Confirm the corresponding author’s institutional affiliation matches the agreement’s eligibility list — coverage is usually keyed to submission-time affiliation.
- Where no agreement or Transformative Journal status applies, brief authors on the Rights Retention Strategy as a compliant, zero-cost fallback.
- Track embargo and licensing changes annually — ACS’s 2023 Article Development Charge shows publisher terms shift within an agreement’s life cycle.
What this means going forward
Transformative agreements were designed as a bridge, not an end state, and cOAlition S continues to review whether hybrid Transformative Journal arrangements should keep counting as compliant beyond their agreed windows. Research offices that maintain a live, journal-level compliance checklist — rather than relying on publisher-level assumptions — will be better placed as Springer, ACS and IEEE renegotiate their respective agreements and as funder mandates evolve. For institutions building a broader research administration compliance workflow, publisher OA-agreement status is one input alongside funder policy tracking and repository deposit monitoring.
