The Society actively encourages open access in scholarly communication and offers various routes to open access publication that comply with the UKRI policy and those of funders globally.
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Authors can publish their final article open access in the Society’s hybrid journals and book series using their institution’s Read and Publish license agreement or discount schemes
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Authors may publish their final article in the Society’s open access journal Earth Science, Systems and Society (ES3) or the open access book series GeoHorizons (co-owned with AGU) on payment of an article processing charge (APC)
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Authors may publish their final article in any of the Society’s hybrid journals and book series on payment of an article processing charge (APC)
The Society offers discounts and waivers through Research4Life (R4L) and membership of the Society.
Current article processing charges (APC) for Lyell Collection journals and book series are provided below.
If you or your authors have questions regarding open access publishing with us please contact us
Open Access publishing options:
Publish in the Geological Society’s fully open access journal and book series
Earth Science, Systems and Society is a fully open access journal. If your article is accepted in this journal the version of record will be made immediately open access with a Creative Commons attribution (CC BY) licence on payment of the article processing charge (APC). If your institution has an institutional Read and Publish agreement the APC is included in the institutional fee.
GeoHorizons is an open access book series published in collaboration with the American Geophysical Union. If your chapter or entire book is accepted in this book series the version of record will be made immediately open access with a Creative Commons attribution (CC BY) licence on payment of the book publishing charge (BPC). If your institution has an institutional Read and Publish agreement the charge is included in the institutional fee.
Corresponding authors submitting to our fully open access journal Earth Science, Systems and Society and our book series GeoHorizons are eligible for waivers through Research4Life in countries classified as ‘Group A’ and ‘Group B’ (via R4L) and to discounted APC rates through membership of the Geological Society.
Publish open access in the Geological Society’s hybrid journals and books series
Publish open access in the Geological Society’s hybrid journals and book series on payment of an article processing charge. The version of record of the accepted article will be made immediately open access with a Creative Commons attribution (CC BY) licence. If your institution has an institutional Read and Publish agreement the article processing fees are waived.
Please contact the Editorial Office by email if you would like further information about publishing with us.
Read and Publish Agreements
Our Read and Publish license agreements and discounted article processing charges help to increase your institution’s research exposure and allows authors to publish more content in an open access format, leading to wider dissemination and increased potential for downloads and citation.
Agreements include read access to 18 journal and book sites, including all current and archived journals, key book series and historic collections in the Lyell Collection. Agreements also offer unlimited open access publishing of all article types in 7 hybrid journals, 4 hybrid book series, the open access journal Earth Science, Systems and Society and the open access book series GeoHorizons.
Authors at institutions with current agreements can take advantage of streamlined open access publishing where fees have already been included in the agreement. Corresponding authors using their institutional affiliation and matching email address are eligible for open access publishing for articles submitted during the year of an agreement.
If you have any questions about the read and publish agreements or discount schemes please contact us. We are continuing to negotiate read and publish agreements with international institutions.
Please note: The eligible author must be the corresponding author and submit using their institutional affiliation and matching email address. The agreements for 2025 apply to submissions received in 2025.
List of journals and book series in read and publish agreements.| Journal or Book series | APC 2025 | |
| Journal of the Geological Society | * | £ 2,500 / US$ 3,500 / 3,000 € |
| Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology | * | £ 2,500 / US$ 3,500 / 3,000 € |
| Petroleum Geoscience | ** | £ 2,500 / US$ 3,500 / 3,000 € |
| Geoenergy | ** | £ 2,500 / US$ 3,500 / 3,000 € |
| Geochemistry: Exploration, Environment, Analysis | *** | £ 2,500 / US$ 3,500 / 3,000 € |
| Scottish Journal of Geology | £ 2,500 / US$ 3,500 / 3,000 € | |
| Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society | £ 2,500 / US$ 3,500 / 3,000 € | |
| GeoHorizons | * | £ 2,500 / US$ 3,500 / 3,000 € |
| Engineering Geology Special Publications | * | £ 2,500 / US$ 3,500 / 3,000 € |
| Special Publications | * | £ 2,500 / US$ 3,500 / 3,000 € |
| Memoirs | * | £ 2,500 / US$ 3,500 / 3,000 € |
| Earth Science, Systems and Society | A | £ 2,000 / US$ 2,800 / 2,400 € |
| B | £ 1,500 / US$ 2,100 / 1,800 € | |
| C | £1,000 / US$ 1,400 / 1,200 € |
| Member discounts | |
| * | Articles where the corresponding author or at least half the authors are Fellows of the Geological Society are entitled to a 25% discount. |
| ** | Articles where the corresponding author or at least half the authors are members of the Geological Society of London or members of the European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers (EAGE) are entitled to a 25% discount. |
| *** | Articles where the corresponding author or at least half the authors are members of the Geological Society of London or members of the Association of Applied Geochemists are entitled to a 25% discount. |
| Earth Science, Systems and Society article types: A. Research Article, Review; B. Perspective; C. Editorial, Viewpoint | |
| (Titles in the "Geoscience in Practice" and "Geology of" book series are excluded from agreements.) | |
| Ebook content is not included in read and publish agreements. | |
Authors at the institutions below may publish with GSL under their 'Read & Publish' agreement for the Geological Society’s Lyell Collection for articles submitted in 2025:
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US Geological Survey
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Consejo Superior De Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC)
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Lund University, Sweden
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University College Dublin
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Indiana University, Bloomington, United States
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Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
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University of Maryland, College Park, United States
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Natural Resources Canada
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Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada
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UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). This agreement includes Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) research centres - British Geological Survey and British Antarctic Survey.
Jisc member institutions can view their read and publish rates and licence information in Jisc Subscriptions Manager.
Authors at the following Jisc member institutions may publish with GSL under a 'Read & Publish' agreement for the Geological Society’s Lyell Collection for articles submitted in 2025:
Bangor University
Birkbeck, University of London
Cardiff University
Heriot-Watt University
Imperial College
Lancaster University
Queen's University of Belfast
Royal Holloway University of London
The Open University
University College London
University of Aberdeen
University of Birmingham
University of Bristol
University of Cambridge
University of Durham
University of East Anglia
University of Edinburgh
University of Exeter
University of Glasgow
University of Leeds
University of Liverpool
University of Manchester
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
University of Oxford
University of Plymouth
University of Portsmouth
University of Sheffield
University of Southampton
University of St Andrews
University of Strathclyde
Authors at the following CAUL member institutions may publish with GSL under a 'Read & Publish' transformative agreement for the Geological Society’s Lyell Collection for articles submitted in 2025:
CSIRO
Macquarie University
Monash University
University of Melbourne
University of Otago
University of Queensland
University of Sydney
University of Tasmania
University of Western Australia
Victoria University of Wellington
Authors at the following ZB Med consortia institutions in Germany may publish with GSL under a 'Read & Publish' transformative agreement for the Geological Society’s Lyell Collection for articles submitted in 2025:
Bundesanstalt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe (BGR)
Freie Universität Berlin
GEOMAR: Helmholtz-Zentrum für Ozeanforschung Kiel
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
GFZ Helmholtz-Zentrum für Geoforschung
Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg
Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Bremen
Technische Universität Berlin
Universität Hamburg
The eligible author must be the corresponding author and submit using their institutional affiliation and matching email address.
Authors at the California Digital Library institutions listed below are able to take advantage of a 25% discount on open access publishing fees for articles submitted in 2024 and 2025:
University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Davis
University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, San Diego
We are a founding member of The Society Publishers’ Coalition (SocPC); a group of like-minded, not-for-profit learned societies, community publishers and charities who share the common ambition to see an orderly and sustainable transition to open scholarship.
Our Read and Publish agreements follow the following principles:
Publishers / Society Publishers that are:
- Not for profit and mission driven
- Actively transitioning away from legacy subscription models and/or piloting transformative approaches
Agreements:
- Offer unlimited OA for all eligible publications plus read access to paywall content
- Any paper eligible under the deal from a corresponding author at a participating institution is included
- Authors and readers are notified of institutional participation to facilitate OA
- Meta-data driven annual reporting for librarians
- Creative Commons licensing
- No NDAs - terms are transparent and publicly available (e.g. agreements deposited on ESAC)
The Society uses ChronosHub for article reporting. More information on the ChronosHub website.*
Articles submitted from December 2023 are listed in ChronosHub article reporting. Please contact us if you would like to be registered as an administrator on ChronosHub for your institutional agreement.
*The approval workflow is not automatically applied to each administrator, please request this if required. The Retro-OA dashboard is not currently enabled by the Society.
To help our authors benefit from our Read and Publish agreements and discounted article processing charges we work closely with institutions during the renewal period at the start of the each new subscription year.
We allow a 3-month grace period to allow time for existing agreements to be renewed. During this time-frame authors from institutions with agreements in place from the previous subscription year and submitting to GSL publications will be recognised as eligible to a waived charge or discount (unless non-renewal of the agreement is confirmed before the end of the 3-month grace period).
Should an institution not renew their agreement then it may be necessary to charge a fee for articles submitted within the grace period (authors will be contacted in these cases).
