We are delighted to announce that the number of institutions participating in our cost-neutral Read & Publish Open Access (OA) initiative has increased by 45% since January 2022.
Over 600 institutions in 39 countries are now participating. We have agreements with ten library consortia, and we have recently renewed our agreements with IReL in Ireland and MALMAD in Israel for a second three-year term.
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 OA growth in both 2021 and 2022, and articles funded by Read & Publish agreements represented 71% of the total number of OA articles published in the journals in 2022. This takes us closer to our goal of converting them to full OA.
We are also delighted that a high proportion of libraries have opted to include our fully OA 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:
“Thanks to the tremendous support we have received from libraries and library consortia around the world, we are thrilled that over 600 institutions in 39 countries are now participating in our Read & Publish OA initiative. We continue to get great feedback about our cost-neutral, uncapped and flexible approach, and we are also delighted with the number of libraries opting for our five-journal package in 2023. We have already signed agreements with ten library consortia, and we look forward to announcing new agreements shortly.”
Claire Moulton, Publisher, The Company of Biologists:
“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.”
