Memorandum of understanding signed for four-year agreement that will empower more UC authors to share their scholarship openly with the world
The University of California (UC) and Taylor & Francis today announced a memorandum of understanding for a four-year read and publish agreement that will make it easier and more affordable for UC researchers to publish open access (OA) articles in nearly 2,500 Taylor & Francis journals. The new partnership between UC and one of the ten largest publishers of UC research advances a mutual goal to empower more authors to share their scholarship openly with readers around the globe.
Under the agreement, the UC Libraries will automatically cover the OA fees in full for any UC corresponding author who chooses to publish OA in Taylor & Francis and Routledge journals. Authors of articles accepted for publication in a hybrid or full OA title will have the opportunity to choose OA at no cost to them.
Taylor & Francis has one of the world’s largest Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) portfolios, with more journals in the Arts & Humanities Citation Index® than any other publisher. The new agreement advances a broader goal within UC to expand support for authors publishing HSS research, areas that generally have had limited funding for OA publishing.
To maximize the number of UC researchers who can benefit from the newly signed agreement, authors of qualifying articles published since January 1, 2024, will be given the opportunity to retrospectively convert their article to open access, with the OA fees fully covered. Authors who have already published OA since January 1 will be offered refunds for OA fees already paid.
In addition to extensive OA publishing support, the agreement also ensures the UC community has continued reading access to nearly 1,300 Taylor & Francis journals.
“With Taylor & Francis’ extensive Humanities and Social Sciences suite of journals, this new agreement offers an exciting opportunity for UC researchers to share their work more openly and widely than ever before,” said Mark Hanna, Associate Professor of History at UC San Diego and chair of the UC faculty Academic Senate’s systemwide committee on library and scholarly communication. “It underscores UC’s commitment to advancing academic research, removing barriers to access, and amplifying the impact of the important work being done across disciplines.”
“The University of California has been a pioneer in advancing OA in the United States, and we have a shared belief in the benefits of opening up the latest research,” said Jeff Voci, Senior Vice President & Commercial Lead – Americas at Taylor & Francis. “I am therefore delighted that many months of work with the UC Libraries team has resulted in a creative solution which fulfills their ambitious objectives. Since 2016, our UC agreements have included help for researchers to choose OA and the new partnership will significantly extend that support, boosting the reach and impact of trusted knowledge.”
Taylor & Francis is a leading publisher of open access journals, books, and research platforms. UC joins over 950 global institutions partnering with Taylor & Francis through open access agreements, including 14 others in the Americas.
