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IOP Science

Open access for authors from UK universities (2014-19)

Please note: The UK offset agreement ends on 31 December 2019. It is superseded by our new open access arrangement for articles accepted for publication after 1 Jan 2020.

Click here for further details.


IOP Publishing (IOP) has reached agreement with a number of UK universities to allow university libraries to manage the cost of article publication charges (APCs) for open access publishing alongside their annual journal subscription costs.

You should contact your university’s open access team to establish whether your APCs will be covered by their centralized funds. This is because each participating university has its own policy in relation to the funding of APCs and has different funding mechanisms in place. Relevant contacts for each participating institution are listed below.

If the open access team confirms that the APCs will be funded centrally, you should select the ‘open access publication’ option when submitting your manuscript.

All articles submitted through the scheme will still go through IOP’s rigorous editorial and peer-review process and receive the same service as all other articles submitted to IOP journals.

If your article is accepted for publication, IOP will send you an invoice, which you should pay or arrange to be paid as directed by your library. For corresponding authors at UCL, IOP will invoice the library directly. In the subsequent year, IOP will provide participating universities with a rebate for the bulk of their expenditure on APCs in subscription journals to be offset against journal licence fees. The agreement directly links what an institution pays for open access publication in IOP’s subscription journals to what it pays for its subscriptions to IOP journals.

As the proportion of open access articles in IOP’s journals grows, all other library customers will also see a reduction in their subscription and licence charges.

All IOP and selected partner subscription titles that offer a hybrid open access option are included in the agreement.

APCs paid on fully open access journals will not be offset as these journals do not have a subscription charge.

If you are an author and have any queries that you would like to send to us directly, please contact the open access team.

Offsetting Agreements

For more information about the offsetting agreements, or to enquire about funding for your APCs, please e-mail the relevant library contact at your university from the list below:

Aston University: openaccess@aston.ac.uk
Cardiff University: openaccess@cardiff.ac.uk
Cranfield University: openaccess@cranfield.ac.uk
Durham University: openaccess.publishing@durham.ac.uk
Heriot-Watt University: open.access@hw.ac.uk
Imperial College London: openaccess@imperial.ac.uk
King’s College London: openaccess@kcl.ac.uk
Lancaster University: openaccess@lancaster.ac.uk
Queen’s University Belfast: openaccess@qub.ac.uk
Royal Holloway University of London: openaccess@royalholloway.ac.uk
Sheffield Hallam University: library-research-support@shu.ac.uk
University College London: open-access@ucl.ac.uk
University of Aberdeen: openaccess@abdn.ac.uk
University of Bath: openaccess@bath.ac.uk
University of Birmingham: openaccesspublications@contacts.bham.ac.uk
University of Bristol: open-access@bristol.ac.uk
University of Cambridge: info@openaccess.cam.ac.uk
University of Edinburgh: UniDesk@ed.ac.uk
University of Exeter: openaccess@exeter.ac.uk
University of Glasgow: research-openaccess@glasgow.ac.uk
University of Leicester: openaccess@le.ac.uk
University of Liverpool: irhelp@liv.ac.uk
University of Manchester: uml.openaccess@manchester.ac.uk
University of Nottingham: library-open-access@nottingham.ac.uk
University of Reading: oarequests@reading.ac.uk
University of Saint Andrews: open-access-support@st-andrews.ac.uk
University of Sheffield: oaenquiries@sheffield.ac.uk
University of Strathclyde: openaccess@strath.ac.uk
University of Sussex: openaccess@sussex.ac.uk
University of Warwick: openaccessfund@warwick.ac.uk
University of York: openaccesspublishing@york.ac.uk