| GENERAL INFORMATION | |
| Publisher | Elsevier |
| Agreement ID | els2026ie |
| Agreement labeling | IReL ScienceDirect agreement 2026-2028 |
| Is the agreement document publicly available? | Yes |
| URL | https://irel.ie/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/ IReL-ScienceDirect-OA-Consortium-Agreeement-2026-2028-public.pdf |
| Agreement period | 1/1/2026 – 12/31/2028 |
| 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.) | No change. R&P with all fees associated with access costs. |
| 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)? |
2000 |
| Is the agreement’s provision for OA publishing capped (e.g., limited to a specific number of articles per year) or uncapped? | Capped |
| What is the publication cap per year? | 1450 per year 2026-2028 |
| 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, alongside hybrid titles |
| Are journals operating under other business models (S2O, Diamond OA, etc.) covered by the agreement? | No |
| Article types
Eligible article types |
Case reports, Data in Briefs, Full-length articles, Micro-articles, Original software publication, Practice guidelines, Protocols, Registered report articles, Registered report protocols, Review articles, Replication studies, Short communications, Short surveys, Video 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 |
| READ ACCESS-RELATED TERMS | |
| Coverage of read access
If the agreement includes read access to subscription content, is access to all relevant journals required by your users covered by the agreement? |
Yes |
| Perpetual access
If the agreement includes read access to subscription content, are perpetual access (post cancellation/termination) rights included? |
Partly (e.g., to core journals only) |
| If perpetual access rights to subscription content is included, are there associated fees (for continued access to the platform, local hosting, data delivery, etc.)? | Yes |
| OA WORKFLOW | |
| Author workflow and verification
The date for articles’ eligibility is based on: |
Acceptance date |
| How do consortia or institutions verify author eligibility and approve OA funding? | Via publisher’s dashboard or third-party platform (pre-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)? | No |
| 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.)? | Yes |
| How would you assess the practical implementation of the agreement? | Ok |
| PUBLISHING LICENSES | |
| Author’s licenses
Open access license types included |
CC BY preference, exceptions allowed |
| Has the author workflow been customized to direct authors to a certain license (e.g., by making the option for CC BY the preselected default)? | No |
| 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? | No |
| In addition to the OA publishing provision, does the agreement include mechanisms to make author accepted manuscripts open access? | No |
Request contact to the licensee: contact@esac-initiative.org