BU Research Blog

Publishing your research open access is extremely beneficial – to facilitate this, BU has a number of agreements with publishers that you can take advantage of. Please click on each publisher name below to read more.

ACM

• Corresponding author must be affiliated to Bournemouth University
• The following article types are covered: research article, short paper, survey article.
• Must be accepted for publication in an ACM Open journal, which accounts for all ACM publications from January 1, 2026.

BMJ –

Article eligibility: Funded* research in the BMJ Journals Collection.

• Corresponding author must be affiliated to Bournemouth University as the grant-holding institution
• Institutional email address must be used in the submission process.
• Needs to be original research, e.g. Original articles reporting primary research (not reviews, commentaries or rapid communications)
• *Research must be funded by one of:
  • UK Research and Innovation (Medical Research Council, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Arts and Humanities Research Council, Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, Economic and Social Research Council, Natural Environment Research Council, Science and Technology Facilities Council, Innovate UK, Research England),
  • British Heart Foundation
  • Blood Cancer UK
  • Cancer Research UK
  • Parkinsons UK
  • Versus Arthritis
  • Wellcome Trust

Cambridge University Press

Article eligibility

• Corresponding author must be affiliated to Bournemouth University
• Needs to be original research, e.g. eligible article types are research articles, review articles and rapid communications, brief reports and case reports.
• Must be accepted for publication in a Cambridge University Press journal covered by the agreement.

Elsevier –

Article eligibility

• Submitting corresponding author must be affiliated to Bournemouth University
• BU email address/affiliation must be used in the submission process.
• The following article types are covered: research and review papers in most subscription (hybrid) journals, including Cell Press and Lancet journals. See Elsevier’s participating journal search for included titles
• Note – pure open access journals are not covered. When publishing in eligible fully gold open access journals, authors will receive a 15% discount on the APC. 
• In non-Cell Press/Lancet journals, the following additional article types are covered: Case Reports, Data in Brief, Microarticle, Original Software Publication,  Protocol, Replication Study, Short Communication, Short Survey, Video Article, Practice Guideline. See Elsevier’s participating journal search for included titles

Important notes

• After acceptance, you will receive an email with a link to the ‘post-acceptance author journey’, where you should select the open access publishing option. The Open Access Team will be notified of your request, and will check that your paper is eligible before approving it
• Publication charges: A small number of economics, finance and accounting journals charge submissions fees, which are reinvested back into the community. Further information on submission fees is available.
• A limited number of society-owned journals charge mandatory editorial page fees in addition to APCs. These charges are charged separately, directly to the author.

SAGE –

Article eligibility

• Corresponding author must be affiliated to Bournemouth University
• Journal should be listed in SAGE Choice (includes 900+ titles from SAGE Premier package, IMechE Journal Collection and Royal Society of Medicine Collection but not all journals from these collection will be included)

Authors in subscription journals do not need to take any action to benefit from this offer – SAGE will contact all eligible authors to inform them of the Open Access agreement with Jisc and to invite them to the SAGE Open Access Portal to take up the offer as soon as their accepted article has been received into SAGE’s Production department.

Gold open access journals: Corresponding authors publishing an article in a gold open access journal are entitled to a 20% discount on the prevailing article processing charge (APC). This is available on 150+ pure Gold journals a list of which are available here.

Where an author is eligible for more than one discount, discounts cannot be combined but the highest discount available to the author will be automatically applied to the APC due.

Springer

Springer’s Journal Finder helps you identify titles where article processing charges (APCs) are either fully covered or partially covered by BU’s read/publish deal.

Article eligibility

• Corresponding author must be affiliated to Bournemouth University
• The following article types are covered: Original Paper, Review Paper, Brief Communication and Continuing Education.
• Note that pure open access journals including Nature open access titles, BioMed Central and Springer Open journals are not included