Cambridge University Press signs major Open Access deal in Sweden

Cambridge University Press has reached a major Open Access deal with higher education and research institutions in Sweden.

The three-year ‘read and publish’ deal has been agreed with Bibsam – a consortium of 85 higher education and research institutions, led by the National Library of Sweden.

Read and publish deals pay for an institution to access a publisher’s journals and also cover the Article Processing Charges authors from that institution would normally pay to publish their work Open Access with that publisher.

It means authors from institutions affiliated to Bibsam can publish their publicly-financed research articles in the Press’s hybrid and fully Open Access journals. It also gives Bibsam members full access to the Press’ full collection of nearly 400 journals across STM and HSS from 1 January 2019.

This latest deal follows a ground-breaking read and publish agreement between the Press and the UKB consortium of 13 Dutch university libraries in May 2017.

Chris Bennett, Global Sales Director (Academic Publishing) at the Press, said: “We are delighted to have reached this agreement with Bibsam. It is a further, clear demonstration of our determination to be at the forefront of building a sustainable, responsible transition to full Open Access on behalf of our authors, their institutions and those who fund them. We recognise and support wholeheartedly the benefits to global research of doing so.”

Anna Lundén, Head of Division, National Coordination of Libraries, National Library of Sweden, said: ‘We appreciate that the agreement with Cambridge University Press continues the transformation to “Read and Publish” for participating organisations in the Bibsam Consortium. The agreement gives researchers affiliated to an organisation part of the consortium unlimited open access publishing of articles in both pure open access and hybrid journals without any additional costs which is an important milestone.’

Mandy Hill, Managing Director of Academic Publishing at the Press, said: ‘This read and publish deal with Bibsam also supports our wider ambitions and our long-term commitment to Open Research – making scholarly publishing more accessible, while ensuring sustainability and quality for the academic community.’