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CERN open-access agreements

CERN has agreements with several publishers. Those agreements are detailed below. You can also consult the CERN Author Guide. 

American Chemical Society (ACS)

  • If the Corresponding author is a CERN Author and the article is submitted in a journal included in this agreement, the article will be automatically detected by ACS and published open access.
  • Important: please make sure to select the licence CC-BY, this is the licence required by the CERN OA policy. 
  • Please contact open-access-questions@cern.ch before the submission if the corresponding author is not a CERN-affiliated author.

American Institute of Physics (AIP)

  • If the Corresponding author is a CERN Author and the article is submitted in a journal included in this agreement, the article will be automatically detected by AIP and published open access.
  • Important: please make sure to select the licence CC-BY, this is the licence required by the CERN OA policy. 
  • Please contact open-access-questions@cern.ch before the submission in the following cases:
    • If the corresponding author is not a CERN author
    • If you plan to publish in an AIP journal not covered by this agreement 

American Physical Society (APS)

  • If the Corresponding author is a CERN Author or if the article is submitted by a CERN collaboration and the article is submitted in a journal included in this agreement, the article will be automatically detected by APS.
  • Important: please make sure to select the licence CC-BY, this is the licence required by the CERN OA policy. 
  • Read the agreement
  • Please contact open-access-questions@cern.ch before the submission in the following cases:
    • If the corresponding author is not a CERN-affiliated author
    • If the article is published by a CERN collaboration with no CERN author
    • If you plan to publish in an APS journal not covered by this agreement 

Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

  • If the Corresponding author is a CERN Author and the article is submitted in a journal included in this agreement, the article will be automatically detected by ACM and published open access.
  • Important: please make sure to select the licence CC-BY, this is the licence required by the CERN OA policy. 
  • Please contact open-access-questions@cern.ch before the submission if the corresponding author is not a CER-author.

Elsevier

  • If the Corresponding author is a CERN Author, and the article is submitted in a journal included in this agreement the article will be automatically detected by Elsevier and published open access.
  • Important: please make sure to select the licence CC-BY, this is the licence required by the CERN OA policy. 
  • Please contact open-access-questions@cern.ch before the submission in the following cases:
    • If the corresponding author is not a CERN author
    • If you plan to publish in a Elsevier journal not covered by this agreement 
  • Read more information about this agreement

Frontiers

  • Please contact open-access-questions@cern.ch in advance of the submission to check the eligibility of the article and to start the administrative procedure for the payment.
  • If your article is eligible, please make sure also that ‘European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)’ is selected as institutional payer in the invoice section when submitting your article to Frontiers. Frontiers will then verify the eligibility with CERN and, if confirmed, the APC (minus the discount) will be paid by CERN upon acceptance.
  • Important: please make sure to select the licence CC-BY, this is the licence required by the CERN OA policy. 

Most relevant titles:

IEEE

  • If the Corresponding author or any co-author has a CERN affiliation, the article will be detected by IEEE, and you will be offered with the open-access option. (See the IEEE author Journey)
    • Select the open-access option
    • Important: please make sure to select the licence CC-BY, this is the licence required by the CERN OA policy.
  • Read the agreement
  • Please contact open-access-questions@cern.ch in advance of the submission if the corresponding author is not a CERN author or in case of any doubt.

Most relevant titles:

IOP

  • If the Corresponding author is a CERN Author or if the article is submitted by a CERN collaboration and the article is submitted in a journal included in this agreement, the article will be automatically detected by IOP and published open access.
  • Important: please make sure to select the licence CC-BY, this is the licence required by the CERN OA policy.  
  • For the Journal of Instrumentation only, the articles with no CERN-affiliated corresponding authors but CERN authors in the author list, the article will be automatically published in open access.
  • Please contact open-access-questions@cern.ch before the submission in the following cases:
    • If the corresponding author is not a CERN-affiliated author
    • If the article is published by a CERN collaboration with no CERN author

MDPI

  • Please contact open-access-questions@cern.ch in advance of the submission to check the eligibility of the article and to start the administrative procedure for the payment.
  • CERN is member of the MDPI Institutional Open Access Program, and benefits from a 20% discount on the standard APC. 
  • If your article is eligible, at the end of the submission, please select the CERN IOAP.   
  • Important: please make sure to select the licence CC-BY, this is the licence required by the CERN OA policy. 
  • After the submission, MDPI will verify the eligibility with CERN and, if confirmed, the APC (minus the discount) will be paid by CERN upon acceptance.
  • Please follow the submission guidelines.

Most relevant titles:

Nature Research Journals (Springer Nature)

  • There is currently no agreement for Nature Research Journals. 
  • Please contact open-access-questions@cern.ch before submission.
  • Please note that CERN SIS doesn’t cover the funding of open-access fees above 4000 CHF. 

Scientific.net

  • If the Corresponding author is a CERN Author, the article will be automatically detected by Scientific.net and published open access. 
  • Important: please make sure to select the licence CC-BY, this is the licence required by the CERN OA policy. 

SciPost

  • SciPost publishes a number of journals without any fee for the reader or for the author.
  • Please follow the submission guidelines.

Most relevant titles:

Springer

Wiley

  • There is no more agreement with Wiley, so the articles submitted by CERN-affiliated authors  won’t be recognized as eligible to be published with open access, but articles can still be centrally covered by CERN SIS under certain conditions. If you want to submit an article please contact open-access-questions@cern.ch before the submission. 
  • Important: please make sure to select the licence CC-BY, this is the licence required by the CERN OA policy. 

World Scientific

  • For the following journals, if the Corresponding author is a CERN Author, the article will be automatically detected by World Scientific and published open access.
    • International Journal of Modern Physics A
    • International Journal of Modern Physics E
    • Modern Physics Letters A
    • The Physics educators
  • Important: please make sure to select the licence CC-BY, this is the licence required by the CERN OA policy. 
  • Please contact open-access-questions@cern.ch before the submission in the following cases:
    • If the corresponding author is not a CERN author
    • If you plan to publish in a World scientific journal not covered by this agreement 

In case of doubt, please use the CERN Author Guide or contact: open-access-questions@cern.ch

CERN Author Guide

Open access through national agreements or arrangements with another academic institution

Many European national library consortia have established national open-access agreements with publishers. If the corresponding author of the article is affiliated with an institution that is a member of such a consortium or if the institution has an individual arrangement, the article will most likely be automatically published open access and you will comply with the CERN Open Access Policy.

One source to find those agreements is ESAC registry, it is not exhaustive but compiles a lot of those agreements, some agreements are also visible on the publisher’s websites:

If you are not sure, please contact us: open-access-questions@cern.ch