Update on HEAL-Link Contract Renewals for 2026
The Hellenic Academic Libraries Link (HEAL‑Link) informs the academic and research community of its member institutions about the status of its agreements with scientific publishers. These agreements provide access to academic and scientific content, and in recent years, many of them also include coverage of the Article Processing Charges (APCs) for Open Access (OA) publishing. It is important to note that multi-year funding planning is crucial, as it ensures more favorable contract terms and substantial support for HEAL‑Link members. For example, many publishers require multi-year agreements and annual prepayment in order to cover APCs.
Regarding the year 2026, HEAL‑Link, fully understanding the needs of researchers and the importance of providing uninterrupted APC coverage as a service, informs that, despite its efforts, the budget has been approved by the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs (ΥΠΑΙΘΑ) only for 2026. Therefore, starting from January 1, 2026, it may not be possible to cover APCs for some publishers. HEAL‑Link is actively negotiating to ensure that the APC coverage service remains active and continuous and has committed to completing the procedures and signing contracts by March 31, 2026. However, the response time of the involved auditing authorities should be taken into account, as it may cause further delays in signing the contracts. Members of HEAL‑Link can follow updates on the Open Access agreements pages and the Scientific Communication Unit.
It should be noted that for 2025, due to the long-standing and excellent cooperation of HEAL‑Link with publishers and the Ministry’s commitment to funding, access to content and the ability to publish in Open Access under the agreements were maintained even before the relevant contracts were signed. All contracts were signed in September 2025. This delay caused issues both in access, such as the temporary suspension of access to TLG, and in the ability to publish in Open Access, as the service was temporarily suspended by some publishers, affecting several researchers whose APC coverage requests could not be fulfilled.
Library & Information Center of the University of Macedonia
Academic Research Support Office
Department of Scientific Information and Documentation
Contact: +30 2310 891 745, 749