Authors looking to have their articles published Open Access (OA) without paying Article Processing Charges (APCs) must use their institutional email address.
In alignment with the 2026-28 Strategy, the Council of Australasian University Librarians (CAUL) and its Member institutions invest significant effort in negotiating Open Access agreements with publishers, such as Read & Publish (R&P) deals, transformative agreements, and other arrangements that enable researchers affiliated with CAUL Member institutions to publish OA and avoid direct Article Processing Charge payments. However, there is a practical step that authors must take to give themselves the best chance of benefiting: using their institutional email address when submitting their manuscript.
Why an institutional email address matters
Publishers and CAUL use a range of methods to validate whether a corresponding author is affiliated with an eligible institution. Some rely on the author’s email domain as a key part of that check. Others use affiliation text, institutional authentication, or a combination of approaches. The methods vary from publisher to publisher and authors generally won’t know which process applies until they are partway through a submission.
When an author submits an article using a personal email address (e.g. Gmail, Hotmail) or address for a different institution, they may be creating an unnecessary obstacle.
A non-institutional address can mean the author isn’t matched to their institution’s agreement, even if they’ve correctly listed their university affiliation elsewhere in the submission. The result can be delay, a missed OA opportunity or an unexpected expensive APC for something their institution has already covered.
Incorrect author details slow down article publishing
For some agreements, CAUL itself plays a direct role in validating author affiliations. When an author has submitted using a personal email address, or an email address associated with another institution, that validation becomes significantly more complex. What should be a straightforward check instead requires follow-up: checking institutional websites, reviewing DOIs, liaising with the relevant library – all of which creates delays for the author and unnecessary administrative work for both CAUL and library staff. In a high-volume environment, these cases add up quickly, creating a bottleneck that slows down article publication.
What authors can do
Ensuring authors use an institutional email address is a vital step in qualifying for OA coverage under CAUL agreements. Other useful steps for a smoother publishing experience include: checking the journal’s submission guidelines, confirming the institution’s participation in a CAUL-facilitated Open Access agreement, and understanding the available Open Access options (e.g. different types of Creative Commons licensing or article types eligible for OA inclusion).
Library staff at each institution are best placed to assist. Further information from CAUL is also available for each publisher agreement.
What library staff can do
Reinforcing this message through local communication channels will help to enable a smooth APC-free Open Access publishing process. When engaging with researchers, remind authors of these key points:
- Always use an institutional email (e.g. name[@]university.edu.au or name[@]university.ac.nz]) as the corresponding author email when submitting to any journal covered by a CAUL-facilitated OA agreement. It may not always be required, but it removes a common point of failure and costs nothing.
- Check before submission. Authors can confirm whether a journal is covered by an agreement through their library’s website, by contacting their library’s scholarly communications team, or through the CAUL Title List service.
- Don’t rely on affiliation text alone. While some publishers will validate affiliation by other means, others won’t and authors generally can’t predict which process a given publisher will use.
A shared effort
CAUL and other interested parties are watching this issue closely. As OA agreements grow in scale and complexity, reliable affiliation validation becomes increasingly important and the current inconsistencies across publisher workflows are well-recognised. CAUL continues to work with publishers to improve and standardise affiliation-matching processes, including advocating for the use of research output repository IDs and other persistent identifiers, and further policy changes are actively under consideration.
In the meantime, researchers need to ensure they are doing their part. Using an institutional email address remains the single simplest thing an author can do to ensure compliance with agreement terms and a smooth path to OA publishing.
Have questions about specific publisher workflows or want help developing local messaging for your researchers? Contact the CAUL Content Procurement team.