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CAUL major publisher negotiations

Updated 1 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 have successfully reached in-principle read-and-publish agreements with Springer Nature and Wiley, covering a three year period. This marks a major milestone in the 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 27% increase in open access output across journals published by SpringerNature, Wiley, and Taylor & Francis in 2026. The agreements include uncapped hybrid and better provisions on gold publishing entitlements.

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.

No agreement with Elsevier

Attempts to reach an agreement with Elsevier have not been successful, which means that there will be NO Elsevier agreement in place for 2026 for ScienceDirect journals.

Access to Elsevier’s other products and content such as Scopus, e-books and Clinical Key are not impacted.

Contingency planning is underway. Alternative options regarding access to ScienceDirect content and article publishing are outlined below. We will continue to update this page as further Information and details come to hand.

Alternative read access to content

  • Currently over 30% of Elsevier journals recent content is already available open access so will continue to be accessible. Past data indicates that 36% of articles accessed by the university community are OA.
  • In addition, a substantial volume of previously subscribed content up to end-2025 can be accessed via ‘post termination access’ (PTA) rights for selected journals on the ScienceDirect platform.
  • Elsevier articles are indexed in Scopus (which you will still have access to) if the full-text is not available then this could be sourced via document delivery.
  • Document Delivery – we are currently investigating document delivery options following the termination of access.
  • Much content can be accessed via institutional and subject-based repositories. There are services such as Unpaywall that signal if an article that is behind a paywall is freely available via Open Access. Unpaywall is integrated into Te Waharoa and there is also a browser plugin available for Chrome and Firefox which will indicate if an article you are trying to view is open access and provide direct link to the full text.
  • The Library is currently analysing reading lists for ScienceDirect content and will leverage other subscriptions or document delivery options where possible to ensure access to required articles for 2026.

Publishing options

  • Academics can still choose to publish with Elsevier. In most cases, this will mean that articles previously covered by the agreement will need to be published via traditional ‘closed access’ route. For academics wishing to publish open access, the following options are available:
    • Authors can choose to pay an Article Processing Charge (APC) to publish open access in a hybrid journal.
    • Authors can continue to choose to pay an Article Processing Charge (APC) to publish open access in a gold open access journal.
  • Where articles are behind a paywall it is encouraged that the post print version (or author accepted manuscript) is deposited in the university’s Open Access Repository via Elements. Embargo periods vary significantly from title to title and range from 6-36 months. Elsevier provides a list of embargo periods by journal title.  Subject Librarians can offer support and advice in relation to this.
  • Seek alternative publishing venues. Authors can also consider alternative publishers that have CAUL OA Agreements.
  • Many Diamond OA journals are free to publish and read can be found via the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
  • The Library’s Open Journal Systems provides free access to some of Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington’s journals and some other Aotearoa and Australian universities have similar platforms - see Open Access Australasia.
  • Researchers might elect to allocate projects funds for open access publishing. Libraries will provide advice to their communities about whether it is appropriate to allocate university funds for hybrid Elsevier APCs during this period.