Ireland's Open Access Leap: A New Deal with Elsevier Promises More

LONDON, UK – March 16, 2026 – The Irish Research eLibrary (IReL) and publishing giant Elsevier have announced a new three-year “Read & Publish” agreement, a move aimed at accelerating Ireland’s transition towards open access research. The deal promises to allow over 70 percent of research from affiliated Irish institutions to be published openly and read globally without subscription barriers, while researchers maintain access to Elsevier's vast journal portfolio.

The collaboration continues a partnership that has already significantly increased the volume of openly accessible Irish scholarship. By bundling the costs of reading subscriptions and open access publishing fees into a single contract, the agreement seeks to streamline a complex process for both institutions and individual researchers.

“This collaboration with IReL builds on the progress already made in expanding open access for Irish research,” said William Rubens, Regional Vice President for Research Sales at Elsevier. He noted the agreement establishes a “stable, multi-year framework” that enhances the reach and visibility of Irish research while providing a more consistent model for institutions.

For the Irish academic community, the deal is positioned as a major step forward. Susan Reilly, Director of IReL, commented, “This collaboration supports Irish institutions and their researchers by combining access to essential scholarly content with open access publishing opportunities. It represents an important step in supporting the visibility and impact of Irish research internationally.”

A National Strategy for Open Science

This agreement is not an isolated event but a key component of Ireland’s ambitious national strategy to reshape its research landscape. The country’s National Action Plan for Open Research 2022-2030 sets a clear target: to make 100% of Ireland’s publicly funded research publications open access by 2030. IReL, a consortium representing Ireland's research libraries, is the central engine driving this transition.

These “transformative agreements,” as they are known in the industry, are IReL’s primary tool. By negotiating with major publishers like Elsevier, the consortium repurposes funds once spent solely on subscriptions to also cover the Article Publishing Charges (APCs) that publishers levy to make an article open access. For individual academics, the most tangible benefit is the removal of this direct financial barrier, which can run into thousands of euros per article.

Ireland has been a European leader in this approach, with IReL having secured over twenty such agreements with various publishers. This strategy aligns with a broader European push towards open science, which advocates for unrestricted access to research outputs to accelerate discovery, improve transparency, and maximize the societal return on public research funding.

The Realities of a Capped System

While the headline figure of “more than 70 percent” of research being published openly is a significant achievement, the mechanics of the agreement reveal the practical complexities of such large-scale deals. The arrangement for Elsevier’s main portfolio of ScienceDirect journals operates on a quota system. For the years 2026 through 2028, a cap of 1,450 open access articles per year is available to researchers across all participating Irish institutions.

This allocation is managed on a first-come, first-served basis. According to IReL’s own documentation, this annual quota “is not projected to cover all articles from participating institutions.” This means that while the agreement successfully removes the direct cost for many, it creates a potential bottleneck. Researchers whose articles are accepted for publication later in the calendar year may find the open access allocation has already been exhausted, leaving them to seek alternative funding for APCs or to publish their work behind a traditional paywall.

This limitation highlights a persistent challenge in the global transition to open access. While transformative agreements are effective at converting a large volume of articles, caps and quotas can introduce new forms of inequity and uncertainty for the research community. It underscores the difficulty of balancing publisher revenue models with the goal of universal, barrier-free access to knowledge.

A Shifting Global Landscape

The Elsevier-IReL deal is a microcosm of a massive, ongoing shift in the multi-billion-dollar scholarly publishing industry. For decades, publishers operated on a subscription model, with libraries paying hefty fees for access. The open access movement, fueled by researchers, funders, and librarians, has forced a strategic pivot.

Publishers like Elsevier, once criticized for lobbying against open access mandates, have now integrated it into their core business strategy. Read & Publish agreements have become their primary vehicle for this transition, allowing them to secure multi-year, multi-million-dollar contracts with national consortia while adapting to market demands. To date, Elsevier has signed such agreements with over 3,000 institutions worldwide.

However, critics within the academic community remain wary. They argue that these deals, while beneficial in the short term, risk cementing the market dominance of a few large commercial publishers. Concerns also persist about the overall cost of these agreements and whether they offer true price transparency. As the open science community looks toward a post-2024 landscape, where key funding bodies like cOAlition S plan to phase out support for transformative agreements, the long-term sustainability of the Read & Publish model remains a subject of intense debate.

For now, the agreement marks a pragmatic and significant step for Ireland. It empowers a substantial portion of its researchers to share their work freely with the world, simplifying workflows and enhancing the global footprint of Irish scholarship. Yet, the presence of limitations like article caps serves as a reminder that the path to a fully open and equitable research environment is still under construction.