Vanderbilt Libraries is pleased to announce a new transformative agreement with Cambridge University Press (CUP) that allows corresponding authors from Vanderbilt University to publish their works Open Access (OA) — without paying author processing charges (APCs) in
hundreds of multi-disciplinary hybrid OA and fully OA Cambridge journals. The agreement also increases access to published research by including all current Cambridge journal articles for the Vanderbilt community.
We are particularly excited by this opportunity as OA journals have been proven to expand access to research for scholars around the world, enhancing both discoverability and citation counts. However, many OA journals require author-side fees, typically called article processing charges (APCs), which prove to be a barrier to many authors. The Cambridge APC savings across campus is estimated to be over $70,000 annually as 91 articles have been published open access by VU authors in Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Sciences since 2017.
Please note that authors who wish to submit their work to an OA journal published by CUP must be the corresponding author and use their @vanderbilt.edu email address to qualify for the APC waiver. More details regarding article eligibility, including what defines a corresponding author, are available at the dedicated Vanderbilt site. If you have additional questions, please consult with your liaison librarian.
FAQs
Q: I submitted an article that is not yet published but declined making it open access. How do I change that?
A: Cambridge performs routine checks looking for opportunities to retroactively move eligible articles to open access. If your article is found to be eligible, they will contact you to make the change.
Q: The journal I am publishing in is a Cambridge journal, but it is not on the list of journals that allow open access publishing. Why?
A: A small number of journals published by Cambridge do not currently offer open access publishing options and are therefore not eligible for open access publication. Cambridge is currently in discussions with the relevant societies who own these journals and hope to negotiate more open access options in the future.
Q: How will the journal notify me of what I’m supposed to do, and how much I’m being asked to pay?
A: Upon acceptance of your manuscript, you will receive an email from Cambridge University Press, via the Copyright Clearance Center, with instructions for how to begin the payment process in Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink system. The RightsLink payment system will show you how much you are being asked to pay, and will then show a discounted amount that should equal a balance due of $0.