New publishing agreements for 2026 are now in place

Thanks to the agreements signed by the library with the publishers, researchers at Umeå University can publish in many journals without having to pay the Article Processing Charge (APC).

The four research funding bodies, the Swedish Research Council, Forte, Formas and Vinnova, have decided to jointly finance publication with a number of publishers that only publish fully open access journals, such as Frontiers, MDPI och JMIR Publications.This means that researchers at Umeå University can publish articles in journals without paying publishing fees to these publishers.   
 
A group of university libraries in Sweden are currently developing a guide on detecting and avoiding questionable publishing practices. The guide is still under development. 

Maria Isberg, librarian at the University Library, works with the library's agreements. She recommends the search function on the library's website:  
- Our search function is very helpful when you want to quickly find out whether a journal is included in our agreements. It also provides links to more information about the terms and conditions and how to access each agreement. 

Two new publishers

MDPI is one of the new publishers with which the library has signed an agreement this year. The agreement with MDPI entails paid publication in all of the publisher's journals. MDPI publishes journals in a wide range of subjects – primarily natural sciences, medicine, technology and environmental sciences, while humanities and social sciences make up a smaller part of the portfolio. The publisher currently publishes nearly 500 open access journals, including a number that are published in collaboration with scientific societies. 
Information and terms of the agreement with MDPI 

Pensoft Publishers is the second publisher that is new for 2026. The agreement with Pensoft entails paid publication in all of the publisher's journals. Pensoft Publishers is a publishing house founded in 1992 in Bulgaria. The publisher publishes approximately 60 natural science journals. 
Information and terms of the agreement with Pensoft Publishers

 
Newsletter 

Therese Nilsson, librarian at the University Library, works with research support in scholarly publishing and notes that there is a lot happening in the field of scholarly publishing: 
- The field is complex and evolving rapidly. At the Library´s Scholarly Communication department, we keep a close eye on developments.  
- This spring, we will launch a newsletter for researchers who want to stay informed about developments in scholarly publishing and open science. If you would like to be among the first to receive it, you can already subscribe.
 
Registration for newsletter