The University of Münster is a member of numerous consortia or has agreements with selected publishers. As a result, open access publications by members of the University can be invoiced collectively, and/or some publishers offer a discount.
Please make sure you submit your articles using your university or university hospital email address – @uni-muenster.de or @ukmuenster.de – so that the publishers can recognize your affiliation.
When it comes to chosing a Creative Commons licence the DEAL consortium, among others, recommends the CC BY license, because it stands out as the best choice for maximizing the impact and outreach of your work.
For agreements with central invoicing the University and State Library initially assumes the costs; they are distributed among the Library and the participating departments in the following year according to the distribution principles established by the University of Münster's Licensing Commission.
As an author publishing in hybrid journals, you have the option of opting out of open access. This, however, means that the article will be published in closed access and that you will transfer exclusive rights to the publisher, which restricts you in the further use of your own work. The article itself would then only be visible worldwide to institutions with a subscription to the corresponding journal. Opting out does not lead to any cost reduction for University of Münster. We therefore urge you not to make use of this option.
In case you have chosen an opt-out by mistake, please contact us quickly: Articles can still be made open access retroactively until the end of January of the year following publication.
If you have publication funds as part of a third-party funded project and would like to use them for an article published via a framework agreement, please contact us.
Third-party funding can only be invoiced once the article has been accepted. und
Please also note that for some agreements – e.g. the DEAL agreements with Elsevier, Springer, and Wiley – articles are not invoiced via individual, but only via collective invoices which the library receives in set intervals. On this basis, we can then invoice you for the amount for your project with a corresponding delay.
The University of Münster is a member of the GASCO consortium.
This results in a 15% discount on Article Processing Charges (APCs) for members of the University who wish to publish in the journal Science Advances.
There is an additional 4% discount for membership in the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Instructions for submitting an article to the journal Science Advances with the discount included.
For 2024–2027, the University of Münster is a member of the consortial agreement "ACM Open".
As Corresponding Authors university and university hospital members can publish open access free of charge in all gold and hybrid journals of ACM.
Resarch articles submitted from 1 January 2024 are eligible for this agreement, with the exception of certain additional services agreed with the publisher.
In case you are a member of ACM please still choose publication via the agreement to make sure the costs are covered.
Thanks to a "Read&Publish" agreement with the American Physical Society since 2025, members of the University and the University Hospital of Münster acting as Corresponding Authors can publish articles free of charge in somem of the publisher's hybrid journals.
Gold journals are not covered by this agreement; if an article meets the criteria of the publication fund, you can apply for publication cost coverage after the article has been accepted by the publisher.
Informationen on the submission workflow
Thanks to a "Read&Publish" agreement with the publisher John Benjamins since 2023, members of the University and the University Hospital of Münster acting as Corresponding Authors can publish articles free of charge under a CC-BY license in all of the publisher's journals.
Article types eligible for funding include "research articles" ,"reviews," and "introductory articles".
Under a "Publish&Read" agreement between Bentham Science Publishers and the Fachinformationsdienst Pharmazie (FID PubPharm) in which the University of Münster participates, Corresponding Authors of the university receive a 50% discount on the Article Processing Charge (APC) on open access publications in hybrid journals of the publisher since 2021.
Manuscripts can be submitted to the publisher for review via the portal "MPS".
Under a "Read&Publish" agreement between Portland Press for the Biochemical Society in which the University of Münster participates, members of the University and the University Hospital of Münster acting as Corresponding Authors can publish articles open access free of charge in all six of the publisher's journals.
Under a "Publish&Read" agreement with BMJ, members of the University of Münster who are Corresponding Authors of Research Articles ("original articles reporting on primary research") are entitled to publish in the journals of the BMJ Journals Online Standard Collection in hybrid open access since 2022.
More information on the submission process can be found on the publisher's page about the agreement.
For a list of journals in the Standard Collection, select Münster University under "Select your institution"; in the blue box that then appears on the right, there is a fold-out list entitled "The journals that you can publish in".
The journal "The British Medical Journal (The BMJ)" is exempt from this regulation; there is also no agreement for Gold open access journals from BMJ.
By the way: you can find the university’s Ringgold ID in the affiliation policy.
Since 2022 the University of Münster has a "Publish&Read" agreement as part of a consortium with the publisher Cambridge University.
Authors from the university acting as Corresponding authors can publish certain article types free of charge in almost all gold and hybrid journals of Cambridge University Press. This means that you will not incur any costs as a result of open access publication, except for certain additional services agreed with the publisher, for which Cambridge University Press will then invoice you directly.
Journals covered by the contract can be found through the publisher's Eligibility Tool.
Upon acceptance of the article, please choose the open access option for hybrid journals and a Creative Commons license (we recommend CC-BY).
Afterwards, the fee will be waived and you will receive a confirmation from Rightslink.
Step-by-step guide to publishing open access articles in Cambridge Journals.
Members of the University of Münster can publish free of charge in the four journals of the Cogitatio Press, "Media and Communication", "Politics and Governance", "Social Inclusion" and "Urban Planning", since 2022.
For 2024–2026, the University of Münster has an agreement with The Company of Biologists.
As corresponding authors university members can publish original research papers open access free of charge in all gold and hybrid journals of the Company.
The agreement applies to articles accepted for publication from 1 January 2024; not covered are review papers, commentaries, correspondence, corrections and additions, posters and other materials.
Informationen on the submission process are given in the Guide for corresponding authors.
Since 2023 the University of Münster has an agreement with the publisher Copernicus.
The costs for publications by members of the University of Münster as corresponding authors in the publisher's Gold OA journals will be invoiced collectively.
Article Processing Charges (APCs) are calculated based on the pages of the submitted manuscript. The framework agreement does not offer a discount on the costs.
For more information, see the publisher's website in the section "Corresponding authors affiliated to University of Münster".
As part of the consortium "De Gruyter Humanities and Social Sciences Journals" launched in 2022, members of the University of Münster can publish open access free of charge as Corresponding Author in some HSS journals.
Articles in some other journals can be posted by authors of the University of Münster in the form published by the publisher immediately after publication and without embargo in an (institutional, discipline-specific, non-commercial) repository of their choice – for example miami – and thus be made openly accessible.
A special case in this package are those journals that are funded according to the "Subscribe to Open" (S2O) model: the articles appearing here will be made open access free of charge by the publisher.
Another package offers economic journals that have been licenced for access at the University of Münster. In some of these journals members of our university can publish open access free of charge as Corresponding Author. Some journals are based on the "Subscribe to Open" (S2O) model, making publishing open access there free of charge.
50% of this package is paid for by the Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
Lists of the journals in the two packages can be found on this publisher's page.
There is also a 20% discount on the Article Processing Charge (APC) list prices for publication in the publisher's genuine OA journals.
A price list is available for the journals.
The University of Münster participates in "ECS Plus", a consortium of the Electrochemical Society (ECS). Therefore, members of the University acting as corresponding author are entitled to publish their articles in the two hybrid journals "Journal of the Electrochemical Society" (JES) and "ECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology" (JSS) open access free of charge and without limitation of the number of articles.
Article processing charges for gold open access journals can be reimbursed via the university's publications funds.
The University of Münster has signed a DEAL agreement with Elsevier until the end of 2028, the period from 2027–2028 still subject to reservation.
University members acting as submitting corresponding authors can publish open access free of charge in all Elsevier journals including Cell Press and The Lancet journals. The article processing charges for Elsevier's Fully Gold open access journals are discounted by 20%, for Cell Press and The Lancet Fully Gold open access journals the discount is 15 %.
The agreement covers articles submitted after 22 November 2023 from the following article types under peer review: Full Length Articles, Review Articles, Case Reports, Data in Brief, Microarticle, Original Software Publication, Protocol, Replication Study, Short Communication, Short Survey, Video Article.
A list of all journals covered by the agreement can be found on the Project DEAL website under "For institutions › Support" (avalable in German only) › "Zeitschriftentitelliste Elsevier".
Some journales from learned societies are not covered by the contract.
The University of Münster has agreed to a consortial agreement with the publishing house Frontiers. Since 2023 the publishing fees for affiliated corresponding authors whose articles are published in one of the almost 180 open access journals will be covered by the University Library. A discount of 10% is granted on all eligible articles.
Attention:
In case Frontiers sends you an invoice for your article this is for your information only: please do not pay it, as the billing procedure is centralized through the university library.
And please be aware of fake invoices.
Since 2022, members of the University can publish all article types as Corresponding Author in 6 hybrid journals and 3 hybrid book series of the Collection open access under CC-BY license for free thanks to a "Read&Publish" agreement between Medical Library and GSL that the University of Münster has joined.
The offer covers the journals Journal of the Geological Society, Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology & Hydrogeology, Petroleum Geoscience, Geochemistry: Exploration, Environment, Analysis, Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society and Scottish Journal of Geology as well as the Special Publications, the Memoirs and the Engineering Geology Special Publications.
The University of Münster participates in a DFG-funded consortium that has concluded a contract with the publisher Hogrefe.
Members of the University receive a 25% discount on publication fees if they publish open access in the publisher's journals (OpenMind model, hybrid publishing).
Under a contract with IOP, members of the University of Münster can publish articles licenced under CC-BY in 56 hybrid journals and 16 gold open access journals free of charge as Corresponding Author since 2022.
Eligible "primary research article" types include "research papers", "special issue articles", "letters", and "review articles".
List of hybrid journals
List of Gold OA Journals
Author Guide
Please note that any page charges are not covered by the Agreement; they may be billed separately to authors and must be paid by them or their institution.
The submission form of the journalsto which this applies refers to the page charge.
Under a consortial agreement starting in 2025 with JMIR Publications members of the University and the University Hospital of Münster acting as Corresponding Authors can publish articles open access free of charge in all Gold Open Access Journals published by JMIR.
There is also a 15% discount on the Article Processing Charges (APCs).
The APCs will be invoiced collectively for the university.
As part of MDPI's Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP), the University of Münster will participate in a consortium agreement under the leadership of ZB MED from July 2025.
Authors from the University and the UKM acting as as Corresponding Authors receive a 15 % discount on journal article publication fees (APCs).
The agreement applies to articles submitted from July 1, 2025. The possibility of having the costs for MDPI articles reimbursed via the university's publication fund is then no longer available!
Articles submitted before July 1, 2025 can be submitted for reimbursement via the funds until the end of 2025.
The University of Münster participates in "RCS Platinum" program 2024–2027.
Members of the university and the university hospital acting as corresponding author are entitled to publish their articles submitted from 1 January 2024 in all hybrid and gold open access journals free of charge.
The article processing charges (APCs) will be invoiced collectively for the university.
Since 2023 Münster University is part of a national consortium with publisher "Royal Society of London" which allows for publishing open access articles in the following journals:
The offer applies to all articles by corresponding authors affiliated to the University of Münster.
On the website of the Royal Society of London you find more information on this R&P agreement. Furthermore, the Society has put together detailed information on the publication process for hybrid journals as well as gold open access journals.
Agreements with the publisher SAGE include various discount options for publication in the different journals.
There is no central accounting for these agreements.
Corresponding authors of the University of Münster receive a 20% discount on the publication fees of SAGE's approximately 200 pure open access journals.
If the article meets the criteria of the publication fund, you can apply for publication cost coverage after the article has been accepted by the publisher.
Corresponding Authors of MünsterUniversity can publish their articles in SAGE hybrid journals free of charge.
You will be informed by the publisher about the possibility of an open access publication.
Authors of the University of Münster are entitled to deposit their articles published in the licensed journals in the published version (publisher's PDF) with a time embargo of one year in the institutional repository miami and thus make them available open access.
The University of Münster joined the SCOAP3 consortium [de] (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics) at the beginning of 2014. This is a worldwide association of libraries and scientists with the aim of making scientific publications in high-energy physics (HEP) freely accessible. The project is coordinated by CERN.
All articles in ten high-energy physics journals are freely available under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY) as of publication. Authors of the University of Münster do not pay publication fees for articles in these journals.
For subsequent journals, the SCOAP3 Consortium will cover article processing fees:
Publication fees for the following journals, that are only proportionately articles from the HEP category, will be covered if the following requirements are met:
Requirements
SCOAP3 will only cover costs if the article is posted to arXiv in the main "HEP" category before it is submitted to the publisher, which means:
The University of Münster has signed the DEAL contract Springer Nature II (2024–2028), the period from 2027–2028 still subject to reservation.
The contract covers all Springer Nature journals with the exception of the Nature branded journals.
More information on the agreement can be found on the Project DEAL website; the list of the journals included in the contract is published under "For Institutions › Support" (only available in German) › Springer Nature › "Zeitschriftentitelliste Springer Nature".
For members of the university who are "corresponding authors" of articles in Springer-Nature journals the open access publishing costs are covered by the contract. Furthermore, the list prices of article processing charges in Springer-Nature fully gold open access journals are reduced by 20%.
Article types that are published open access under the conditions of the contract are research articles (i.e. original papers, review papers, brief communication) aas well as non-research articles (i.e. editorial notes, book reviews, letters, reports).
Non-research articles are published at no additional costs.
Special conditions apply for specialist medical journals, "Facharztzeitschriften": Invited articles for these journals and non-research articles are not covered by the contract.
Authors will not receive invoices: The invoicing procedure for all articles of members of the university is centralised.
The University of Münster is part of the nationwide consortium for the journal "Nature" and other so-called "Nature Branded Journals" (NBJ) since 2022.
Through the NBJ transformative agreement, it is possible to publish open access in "Nature" and several other NBJ journals as a "submitting" or "corresponding author" at no additional cost.
A list of all NBJ titles and the open access titles included in the package can be found on the agreement's website under "Eligible journals".
If you are logged into Springer's publication system with your University of Münster or "UKM" (Münster's University Hospital) email address, the costs for the journals covered by the Nature framework agreement should be covered automatically.
The University of Münster has signed an agreement 2024–2026 with Taylor & Francis. Members of the University acting as corresponding author are entitled to publish their research articles accepted for publication after 1 January 2024 in all hybrid open access journals – Open Select Journals – free of charge.
There is a 15% discount on the article processing charges for gold open access journals.
All charges will be invoiced collectively for the university.
The University of Münster has signed the DEAL-contract Wiley II (2024–2028), the period from 2027–2028 still subject to reservation.
The contract covers all Wiley journals. More information on the agreement can be found on the Project DEAL website; the list of the journals included in the contract is published under "For Institutions › Support" (only available in German) › Wiley › "Zeitschriftentitelliste Wiley".
For members of the university who are "corresponding authors" of articles in Wiley journals the open access publishing costs are covered by the contract. Furthermore, the list prices of article processing charges in Wiley gold open access journals are reduced by 20%.
Article types that are published open access under the conditions of the contract are "primary research articles" and "review articles", including but not limited to articles considered by Wiley as Case Study, Commentary, Data Article, Education, Lecture, Method and Protocol, Perspective, Practice and Policy, Rapid Publication, Research Article, Review Article, Short Communication, and Technical Note.
"Quiz Cases" are not covered by the agreement.
Authors will not receive invoices. The invoicing procedure for all articles of members of the university is centralised.
