Negotiated through the sector-wide collaboration between CAUL, Universities Australia and Universities New Zealand – Te Pōkai Tara, the agreements will commence on 1 January 2026. Both agreements provide comprehensive open access publishing options for authors at participating institutions, including both gold and hybrid journals. Authors will now be able to publish openly without facing article processing charges.
These arrangements mean a larger proportion of research produced by staff at Australian and New Zealand universities and published in Springer Nature or Wiley journals will be freely available for anyone to read. Combined with CAUL’s recent Taylor & Francis announcement, these agreements will enable an increase in open access publishing by 4,000 articles, in addition to existing agreements.
CAUL Content Procurement Committee Chair Hero Macdonald said: “These in principle agreements with Wiley and Springer Nature continue the region’s strong momentum towards a more sustainable, fully open access environment.
“The strong support for gold open access, together with uncapped publishing availability across hybrid journals, ensures that authors have clear and reliable pathways to publishing openly and that more of our region’s research will be available to our communities than ever before.
“Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis have approached these negotiations with a real willingness to listen and work with us to design agreements that better meet the sector’s needs. These outcomes demonstrate what can be accomplished when we work together with a clear, shared vision.”
The agreements were negotiated under CAUL’s new national framework, established in response to rising institutional costs and long-standing inequities associated with subscription-based pricing and open access processing charges.
CAUL Open Access Negotiation Strategy Committee Chair and Deakin University Vice-Chancellor Professor Iain Martin said: “Our shared approach with Universities Australia and Universities New Zealand is focused on securing agreements that deliver value and sustainability for not just our universities, but also our communities who rely on access to trustworthy information.”
These new read and publish agreements add to the recent announcement that agreement in principle had been reached for a new open access agreement with Tayor & Francis, also set to commence in 2026. At the same time, CAUL announced that negotiations with Elsevier had paused.
