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Open Access

Learn about Open Access and how to make your scholarship freely available.

About the Agreement

The Lehigh University Libraries have entered into an Open Access (OA) publishing agreement with Springer Nature via the Lyrasis consortium. This agreement covers 2024 (although retroactive coverage before July is currently undetermined), 2025, 2026, and 2027. This is a “read and publish” agreement that increases subscription access to Springer journals. Lehigh University-affiliated corresponding authors can also publish their eligible, accepted articles OA in some Springer journals at no cost to the researcher. This agreement covers only hybrid journals, where some articles are OA, and some are subscription-access.  Fully Open Access journals (sometimes called Gold OA journals) are not included in this agreement. Neither the subscription access nor the OA publishing rights include Nature-branded journals.

This agreement has an article cap limiting the number of articles that can be published under the agreement each year. This article cap is managed by the Lyrasis consortium. Articles are published on a "first come, first served" basis.

Eligible article types include original papers, review papers, brief communications, and continuing education (which are usually medical) articles.

To ensure coverage of your article under this agreement, please select Lehigh University as your institution when prompted in the publication process and use your @Lehigh.edu email address.

Instructions for Authors

At a high level, please be sure to take these initial steps to ensure eligibility of your article under this agreement:

  • Ensure you or a Lehigh-affiliated co-author are listed as the corresponding author for the article submission.
  • Ensure that you list Lehigh University as your institution in the publication process and use your @Lehigh.edu email address.
  • Confirm that the journal to which you are submitting is covered under the agreement.

Additional information, including a downloadable list of eligible titles, is available at Springer Nature's website for the OA agreement with Lyrasis, linked below.

For help with any questions or issues, please contact Phil Hewitt at pjh315@lehigh.edu and/or oa.verification@springernature.com.

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