We are delighted to announce that a further 58 institutions have joined our cost-neutral Read & Publish Open Access (OA) initiative since January 2023.
Over 650 institutions in 41 countries are now participating. In addition, a further two
library consortia; the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISER) and the
Joint University Librarians Advisory Committee (JULAC) Consortium in Hong Kong, have
also recently signed agreements increasing the number of participating consortia to 12.
The success of our Read & Publish initiative is continuing to drive significant growth in the
proportion of OA research content in our hybrid journals – Development, Journal of Cell
Science and Journal of Experimental Biology – which were the first in the world to be
afforded Transformative Journal status by Plan S. All three Transformative Journals met
their targets for Open Access growth in both 2021 and 2022. Our increasing proportions of
OA content are driven by our Read & Publish agreements, which represented 71% of the
total number of Open Access articles published in the hybrid journals in 2022.
We are also delighted that nearly half of participating libraries have opted to include our
fully Open Access journals – Disease Models & Mechanisms and Biology Open – in their Read
& Publish agreements in 2023.
Shelly Turner, Head of Sales and Business Development at The Company of Biologists says:
“We are delighted with the continuing support for our Read & Publish initiative from our
library customers and library consortia around the world. We are also thrilled that nearly
half of our Read & Publish customers are benefitting from the five-journal package which
offers uncapped submission of Open Access research articles in our three hybrid and two
fully Open Access journals which will help us to reach our targets for OA growth over the
coming years.”
Claire Moulton, Publisher at The Company of Biologists, says:
“As part of our long-standing commitment to OA and our track record of innovation, we
were one of the first not-for-profit publishers to launch a Read & Publish initiative. The
ongoing success of the initiative is supporting our Transformative Journal strategy and has
helped us to meet our targets for OA growth. We have also been delighted with the
fantastic feedback we have had from authors who have benefitted from immediate and
fee-free OA publishing in our journals, particularly from early-career researchers for whom
lack of funding can be a major issue.”
Read the announcement online at https://www.biologists.com/library-hub/news/read-publish-650-institutions/
About The Company of Biologists
The Company of Biologists is a not-for-profit publishing organisation dedicated to
supporting and inspiring the biological community. We partner with libraries and library
consortia to enable biologists worldwide to access our leading peer-reviewed hybrid
journals – Development, Journal of Cell Science and Journal of Experimental Biology.
We have a long-standing and ongoing commitment to Open Access. Our cost-neutral Read
& Publish initiative enables corresponding authors at participating institutions to publish
an uncapped number of OA research articles in our hybrid journals without charge. We
were the first not-for-profit publisher to commit to the Transformative Journal approach
and our journals were the first to be awarded Transformative Journal status by Plan S. We
also publish two fully OA journals – Disease Models & Mechanisms and Biology Open. Over
650 institutions in 41 countries are now participating in our cost-neutral Read & Publish OA
initiative. We also have Read & Publish agreements with twelve library consortia.
Learn more about our new bio-positive publishing initiative, The Forest of Biologists
Contact: Shelly Turner
Email: Shelly.Turner@biologists.com
Website: biologists.com/read-publish
Twitter: @Co_Biologists
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