Open Access Publishing

As a member of the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC), Pepperdine Libraries is part of several read-and-publish agreements allowing Pepperdine-affiliated authors to publish articles open access at no cost. As part of their agreement, the publishers listed below will cover the article processing charges on research articles accepted for publication in their journals. For articles written by more than one person, the author listed as the corresponding author must be from Pepperdine to be eligible for the article processing charge waiver.

American Chemical Society (valid until December 31, 2025)

• Any Pepperdine corresponding authors who wish to publish open access in all 79 subscription-based and fully open access American Chemical Society journals can do so through a discounted article processing charge of $3,000. Those who do not have research funds to pay the discounted article processing charge can request full funding from SCELC.

  If an author has grant funding for open access publishing, authors receive a discounted $3,000 open access article processing charge. If the author does not have grant funding for the article processing charge, the author can still choose to publish open access. When they are asked if they have research funds to pay for the article processing charge, they should select “seek funding” which will route the request to the SCELC subscription pool.

Cambridge University Press (valid until December 31, 2024)

• All Pepperdine corresponding authors are offered open access publishing at no charge. During the submission process, their institutional affiliation and email are used to automatically associate with the SCELC agreement and, upon acceptance, are offered open access publishing. Original research articles are defined as research articles, review articles, rapid communications, brief reports, and case reports. Authors can use Cambridge’s waivers and discounts page to confirm their eligibility ahead of time and view a list of the 387 journals covered by the agreement. Authors who published on or after January 1, 2021 may order open access retroactively within the same year of publication.

Springer (valid until December 31, 2024)

• Any Pepperdine corresponding authors who wishes to publish open access in any of the 2,068 hybrid journals contained within Springer, Palgrave, society-owned academic journals on Nature.com, or Adis collections is eligible as long as their original paper, review paper, brief communication, or continuing education publication is accepted. Two caveats:

  Nature-branded or Scientific American content is excluded as are the 279 fully open access journals in the Springer portfolio.

  This agreement will provide free open access publication for up to 550 articles in 2023 across participating SCELC institutions (including Pepperdine University), which is roughly 101% of the average number of qualifying articles that participating institutions’ corresponding authors published in those journals over the past three years. It is possible that the SCELC consortium will collectively exceed this cap, but a historical analysis of author open access opt-out rates and other factors makes this unlikely. It is hoped that future agreements will be able to include a higher number of articles and journals.

The Company of Biologists, Ltd. (valid until December 31, 2026)

• Through an agreement established between The Company of Biologists, Ltd and Pepperdine Libraries, all Pepperdine corresponding authors are offered open access publishing at no charge for articles published between 2024-2026. The included journals are: Journal of Experimental Biology, Development, Journal of Cell Science, Disease Models & Mechanisms, and Biology Open. Refer to this step-by-step guide for corresponding authors to learn more.

Elsevier (valid until December 31, 2027)

All article publication charges (APCs) are now covered in full for any Pepperdine corresponding authors who wish to publish open access for over 1,800 Elsevier hybrid journals pending acceptance in the journal. During this same time period, APCs may be covered for an additional 500 gold open access Elsevier journals. We encourage you to use this benefit. It comes at no additional fee to Pepperdine University or the Pepperdine Libraries as a result of a cost-neutral three year Read & Publish Agreement negotiated between our library consortium SCELC and Elsevier. 

To take advantage of this agreement, refer to the eligible titles lists for Elsevier hybrid journals and Elsevier Gold Journals. The corresponding author must be affiliated with Pepperdine and this role cannot be reassigned once the article has been submitted.

While the number of open access articles published in hybrid journals (where open access is optional) is unlimited, there are limitations in funding availability for publishing in fully open access journals (where open access is mandatory) and Elsevier has placed a cap on the amount that SCELC libraries can publish collectively in a given year. Funding is first-come, first-serve based on when the article is accepted. This means authors submitting to a fully open access Elsevier journal should be prepared to pay the APC at acceptance in the unlikely event that the number of fully open access journal articles published by SCELC institutions exceeds the limit in any given calendar year. Authors can contact Marc Vinyard for questions before submitting an article.