| 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 |
| OVERALL ASSESSMENT AND COMMENTS | |
| Please share your overall assessment of this agreement with the community. Were negotiation goals (such as open access, cost development, etc.) reached? Which elements would have to be adjusted in future agreements? | We are satisfied that the agreement significantly increases the OA allocation (by 24%, compared with previous deal) and continues to include Gold journals, although the agreement does not meet our ambition of uncapped OA for all eligible publications |
Request contact to the licensee: contact@esac-initiative.org
