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CAUL major publisher negotiations

Updated 16th December 2025

The Council of Australasian University Librarians (CAUL) has been working with Universities New Zealand and Universities Australia to re-negotiate the University’s read and publish agreements with Springer Nature, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, and Elsevier.

CAUL has now reached an in-principle agreement with global academic publisher Elsevier as of 16th December which means that there will be uninterrupted access to ScienceDirect content and coverage of open access publishing fees across their hybrid journal titles.

This represents the final renegotiated agreement with the biggest four international academic journal publication companies and marks a substantial shift toward fair, sustainable and transparent access to research across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.

Agreement Details

These agreements will commence on 1 January 2026, and they will deliver a substantial increase in open access output across journals published by Elsevier, SpringerNature, Wiley, and Taylor & Francis in 2026. The agreements include uncapped hybrid and better provisions on gold publishing entitlements.

Elsevier

  • The in-principle agreement delivers a substantial reduction in sector expenditure.
  • Uncapped hybrid open access publishing across the full Elsevier portfolio, including internationally renowned journals such as Cell Press and The Lancet.
  • Other measures to begin addressing the inequities associated with previous legacy pricing models.
  • Gold OA titles are not included in the agreement

SpringerNature

  • Uncapped hybrid publishing for Springer journals (previously capped)
  • In general, SpringerNature doesn’t include gold publishing in its agreements. However, there is some coverage  for gold publishing in the new deal (176 articles in Year 1).
  • Only Springer-branded titles are considered in gold publishing.
  • Nature or BioMed Central titles are NOT included.

Taylor and Francis

  • Landmark Open Access (OA) agreement
  • Uncapped hybrid and gold publishing

Wiley

  • Uncapped hybrid publishing
  • Agreed cap for gold publishing (2106 articles), which will increase by 2.5% in years 2 and 3.
  • “20% discount on any APCs paid for outside of the agreement.” The current agreement is a 10% discount.