Over the past years, these agreements have significantly expanded publishing opportunities for Stellenbosch University (SU) researchers by offering substantial discounts on article processing charges (APCs) and, in many cases, enabling authors to publish their work as OA without incurring any direct costs. As of 2026, SU-affiliated researchers are able to publish OA in more than ten thousand journal titles, many of which form part of SU Library’s existing subscription portfolio. These developments are largely facilitated through agreements negotiated by the South African National Library and Information Consortium (SANLiC), which aim to reduce financial barriers to scholarly publishing while enhancing the global visibility and accessibility of South African research outputs.

Some of these R&P agreements include a capped number of articles that may be published OA by SU-affiliated authors, while others allow for unlimited publishing. During the final months of 2025 and early January 2026, a number of authors were informed that the national allocation for OA publishing had been reached for certain publishers. In response, the SU Library and Information Service has introduced a monitoring mechanism to track article allocations more closely and to inform authors promptly when publishing caps for specific agreements are nearing exhaustion. The library trusts that SU-affiliated authors whose OA submissions could not proceed at the end of 2025 due to these limitations have now been notified that the publisher agreements have been renewed for the current year.

In 2026, the American Institute of Physics was added to the portfolio of publishers participating in the SU Library and Information Service R&P agreements. In addition, six agreements that were due to expire in 2025 were successfully renewed, including those with the American Chemical Society, Elsevier, IOP Publishing (IOPscience Extra), Oxford University Press, Springer Nature, and Wiley. These renewals complement existing agreements that remain in place with the Association for Computing Machinery, Cambridge University Press, Emerald Publishing, Royal Society of Chemistry, SAGE Publishing, Taylor & Francis, and The Company of Biologists. Collectively, these agreements strengthen the SU’s commitment to advancing open scholarship and supporting researchers in disseminating their work more broadly.

The SU Library will continue to pursue opportunities to make OA publishing the default for SU researchers, to enhance global visibility, research impact, and ultimately the University’s ranking. A comprehensive list of eligible journal titles included in these agreements is available here.

For enquiries about open access agreements or any open access related queries, contact Mr Sizwe Ngcobo (Manager: Open Access Scholarship), tel.: 021 808 9907.