Update on the Renewal of Agreements for the Year 2026

HEAL-Link informs the academic and research community of its member institutions about the current status of its agreements with scholarly publishers. These agreements provide access to academic and scientific content, and in recent years, many of them also include coverage of Article Processing Charges (APCs) for Open Access (OA) publishing.

It is particularly important to ensure long-term financial planning and multi-year funding commitments, as these enable more favorable agreement terms and substantial support for HEAL-Link members. Publishers typically require multi-year contracts and annual prepayment in order to include coverage of APCs under Open Access agreements.

Regarding the year 2026, HEAL-Link fully understands the position of researchers and the importance of maintaining stable and uninterrupted APC coverage under its agreements. However, despite HEAL-Link’s relevant actions, funding approval from the Ministry of Education, Religious Affairs, and Sports (ΥΠΑΙΘΑ) has been granted only for the year 2026. Consequently, it is highly likely that, as of January 1, 2026, APC coverage under certain publishers’ agreements may not be available.

HEAL-Link is currently negotiating to ensure that the APC coverage service remains active and continuous and is committed to completing all procedures and signing the contracts by March 31, 2026. Nevertheless, the response time of the involved auditing authorities must also be taken into account, as it may cause additional delays in the signing of the agreements. In any case, HEAL-Link members may stay informed about developments through the pages dedicated to Open Access agreements and the Scholarly Communication Unit.

It should be noted that for the year 2025, due to HEAL-Link’s long-standing and excellent cooperation with publishers and the Ministry’s funding commitment, both access to content and the possibility to publish Open Access under the agreements were maintained even though the contracts had not yet been signed. All contracts were finalized and signed in September 2025. This delay, however, caused problems both in access—such as the temporary interruption of access to TLG—and in Open Access publishing, with some publishers suspending the APC coverage service. As a result, several researchers experienced issues, as their APC coverage requests could not be fulfilled.