| GENERAL INFORMATION | |
| Publisher | PLOS |
| Agreement ID | plos2026ie |
| Agreement labeling | IReL-PLOS flat fee agreement, 2026 |
| Is the agreement document publicly available? | Yes |
| URL | https://irel.ie/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/IReL-PLOS-2026-agreement-public.pdf |
| Agreement period | 1/1/2026 – 12/31/2026 |
| Consortia / Institution | IReL |
| Country | Ireland |
| COST | |
| How do the costs of the agreement relate to the previous agreement with the publisher? | Agreement costs within the range of the previous spending level |
| Describe how the cost model has changed from the previous agreement (e.g., move from subscription to R&P / from capped to uncapped / from single APC payments to flat fee, etc.) | Continuation of flat fee uncapped OA publishing model |
| Read-access costs
If the agreement includes read access to subscription content, is a split of the cost between read access and publishing services defined? |
No |
| PUBLISHING-RELATED TERMS | |
| Publication output
What is the approximate number of annual corresponding author publications from your institution/consortium with the publisher (in closed, hybrid and fully OA journals)? |
130 |
| Is the agreement’s provision for OA publishing capped (e.g., limited to a specific number of articles per year) or uncapped? | Uncapped |
| Coverage
Are all journals relevant to your affiliated authors (i.e., journals in which you expect them to publish) eligible for OA publishing under the agreement? |
Yes |
| Are APC-based full open access journals covered by the agreement? | Yes, the agreement only covers APC-based fully OA titles (publishing-only agreement) |
| Are journals operating under other business models (S2O, Diamond OA, etc.) covered by the agreement? | No |
| Article types
Eligible article types |
Original research articles, Review articles |
| Risk sharing
What risk-sharing mechanisms exist in cases of exceeding or not reaching the anticipated number of OA publications under the agreement? |
No risk-sharing mechanism |
| OA WORKFLOW | |
| Author workflow and verification
The date for articles’ eligibility is based on: |
Acceptance date |
| Describe the mechanisms used by the publisher for matching authors with an eligible institution: | Text-matching, Email domain verification |
| How do consortia or institutions verify author eligibility and approve OA funding? | Via publication reports (post-publication) |
| Does the agreement include mechanisms to correct mistakenly approved, missed, or not approved publications (e.g., retrospective OA conversion of closed articles or refunding paid APCs)? | Yes |
| Does the publisher’s reporting on publications satisfy the needs of your institution (frequency, metadata fields, data quality, etc.)? | Yes |
| May authors be charged additional publication fees (such as page charges, article development charges, etc.)? | Not part of the negotiations/not discussed |
| How would you assess the practical implementation of the agreement? | Deficient |
| Comments on workflows | IReL’s preference is to approve eligible articles on acceptance, which the publisher can not support at this time |
| PUBLISHING LICENSES | |
| Author’s licenses
Open access license types included |
CC BY mandatory |
| If the agreement covers licenses more restrictive than CC BY, do the License to Publish agreements (LtP) offered to authors differ from the publisher’s standard LtP? | Not part of the negotiations/not discussed |
Request contact to the licensee: contact@esac-initiative.org