Elsevier

Open Access Publishing in SD Freedom Journals

Under the FinELib consortium’s agreement with Elsevier, corresponding authors can publish their articles open access during 1.1.2024–31.12.2025 without article processing charge (APC) in Elsevier hybrid journals and journals flipped from hybrid to gold open access or with 15% discount of the journal’s APC in Elsevier gold open access journals.

There is a limited number of free open access articles available. Articles will be published under CC BY or CC BY-NC-ND license. We recommend that you choose CC BY which is required by many funders.

Am I eligible?

You are eligible if you meet the criteria below:

  • You are the corresponding author of the article, who is to communicate with Elsevier through the peer review process.

  • You are affiliated with one of the participating institutions.

  • Your article has been accepted for publication in Elsevier

  • The acceptance date of your article is between Jan 1, 2024 and Dec 31, 2025

  • Your article has been peer-reviewed. Peer-review article types include:

    • full length journal articles
    • review articles
    • short communications
    • case reports
    • short reviews (surveys)
    • original software publications
    • data articles
    • micro-articles
    • protocols
    • replication studies
    • videos

Is my journal compliant with Plan S?

Use the Journal Checker Tool to see if your preferred journal is compliant with Plan S and with the Academy of Finland's OA policy.

I am eligible, what do I need to do?

Once your article is accepted, you will receive an e-mail from Elsevier asking you to fill in the Rigths and Access form.

Filling in the Rigths and Access form

  1. Corresponding Author's organization: Start typing the name of your organisation and select the correct one from the list offered by the system. Affiliation details will be used to identify the authors and match them to the FinELib agreement.

    If you do not find your organisation's name, please contact your library/information service for more information.

  2. If relevant in the case of your article, fill in the co-author and funder details.

  3. If your affiliation details match to FinELib agreement, and based on the journal, you will be presented an option to publish open access without APC fee (the article publishing charge has been credited), or with 15% APC discount.

  4. Select the CC license. We recommend that you choose CC BY which is required by many funders.

  5. In case you are eligible for 15 % APC discount, you will be asked to provide the APC billing address details. Elsevier will send the invoice to the address you have provided. Fill in the invoicing information as accurately as possible so that the invoice is directed to the correct address.

  6. Proceed to the confirmation page and complete the request.

After you have completed the request it will be forwarded to your institution for approval. Once your institute has verified your eligibility, you will receive a confirmation.

If your request is accepted, Elsevier will either

  • make your article freely available online without APC payment, or
  • send a discounted invoice to the billing address you have specified, and after the invoice has been paid, the article will be made freely available online.

If your request to publish open access is not approved or the maximum number of free open access articles has been reached you will have the option to pay the APC yourself.

If you chose to publish your article behind a paywall, or would like to change CC BY-NC-ND license to CC BY, it is possible to retrospectively publish your article open access or with CC BY license within certain time limits. Please contact your library/information service for help.

If you need further information or help with open access publishing process, please contact your library/information service. Instructions to authors can also be found on Elsevier web pages.