The Publications Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the Universities of The Netherlands (UNL) consortium have renewed their partnership to advance open access publishing. This signals their continued commitment to the principles of open science in a “read and publish” agreement, which is set to last for the next four years.

“As ACS’ first partner in a read and publish agreement, UNL displayed a visionary leadership,” says Frankie Martin, EMEA sales director at ACS. “Since our original agreement was signed in 2016, ACS has entered into similar agreements with hundreds of institutions around the world, a trajectory that has proven UNL to be bold innovators in this space. We are thrilled to continue our partnership with them.”

A read and publish agreement helps speed the transition to open science by making it easier for authors to publish open access. Universities are a key partner in this transition, and a read and publish agreement allows these institutions to retain access to subscription articles while using their subscription budget to support authors’ open access licenses. This arrangement has benefited both UNL’s researchers and the global chemistry community: In the past five years, UNL’s researchers have published hundreds of open access articles in ACS journals. This renewal agreement will enable all articles published by UNL’s researchers to be available open access in any of ACS’ more than 60 hybrid journals.

“I’m pleased to see that our partnership with UNL will continue,” says James Milne, Ph.D., president, ACS Publications. “This early partnership laid the foundations of our read and publish program, which has grown to benefit authors and readers around the globe. I am looking forward to discovering the research articles that will result from this renewed partnership.”

Read and publish agreements such as this are only one element of ACS’ multifaceted commitment to open science. Putting the researcher at the center of its programming, ACS has worked to ensure that authors’ needs are met through its open science initiatives. Through its journal publish agreement wizard released last year, authors are provided with a streamlined system, easing open access license selection and workflows. The recently launched ACS Journal Finder also helps researchers select the right journal in which to publish their research articles and identifies institutional support for open access publishing.

The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS’ mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and all its people. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, eBooks and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world’s scientific knowledge. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

To automatically receive press releases from the American Chemical Society, contact newsroom@acs.org.

EUA has signed up to the “Action Plan for Diamond Open Access” which aims to promote a sustainable, community-driven Diamond Open Access (OA) scholarly communication ecosystem. Published on 2 March 2022, the document is an initiative of Science Europe, cOAlition S, OPERAS and the French National Research Agency (ANR).

The Action Plan has four priority areas: efficiency, quality standards, capacity building and sustainability, following the recommendations presented in the “Open Access Diamond Journals Study”. EUA and other stakeholders attended a dedicated online workshop on 2 February 2022 to discuss the draft proposal and provide input to the final Action Plan.

EUA endorses the document and welcomes its goal of aligning and developing shared resources for the entire Diamond OA ecosystem, while respecting the cultural, multilingual and disciplinary diversity that constitute the strength of the sector. The Action Plan reflects some of the key priorities of the EUA Agenda for Open Science 2025, including advocating for a just scholarly publishing ecosystem that is transparent, diverse, economically affordable and sustainable, technically interoperable and steered by the research community. Supporting non-commercial, scholar-led publishing initiatives is also identified in the EUA new universities Open Access checklist as a useful way universities can develop and foster Open Access activities.

The objectives of the Action Plan are also in line with EUA’s role in the Horizon Europe DIAMAS project (Developing Institutional open Access publishing Models to Advance Scholarly communication) due to be launched soon. Under DIAMAS, EUA will support the development of practical recommendations for Institutional Open Access Publishing Services Provider (IPSP) policies and strategies together with core project partners ANR, cOAlition S, OPERAS and Science Europe.

At the time of launch, over 40 international organisations had already endorsed the Action Plan. Organisations that wish to support the development of the Diamond OA ecosystem and become part of its community can join them at the dedicated form.

The University of California and Wiley today announced an innovative one-year open access agreement pilot for 2022 that will make more of the University’s research available to read and share worldwide.

The agreement brings together UC, which generates nearly 10 percent of all U.S. research output, and Wiley, which publishes nearly 2,000 peer-reviewed journals, to advance a sustainable transition to open access.

Under the pilot agreement, which covers articles published from January 1 to December 31, 2022, Wiley will make open access the first-choice option for articles by authors at five UC campuses — Irvine, Merced, Riverside, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz.  For authors at those five campuses who publish in Wiley journals, the UC libraries will automatically cover the first $1,000 of the article publication charge (APC) and authors will be asked to pay the balance; those who do not have research funds available can request full funding of the APC from the libraries.  The pilot allows UC and Wiley to test new processes and models and will help with product development before exploring potential future expansion to the entire UC system.

Additionally, corresponding authors at all ten UC campuses and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will receive a discount on APCs when publishing open access in Wiley journals.

“The University of California is a pioneer when it comes to open access, and we are eager to begin this partnership in the joint pursuit of a more open research ecosystem,” said Liz Ferguson, Senior Vice President, Wiley Research Publishing. “We are delighted to be working together with this group to develop new transformational agreement models and processes that could have a wider application across the world.”

The agreement covers disciplines across Wiley’s broad portfolio, supporting rapid dissemination of research from the social sciences and humanities to life and health sciences, physical sciences and engineering. UC researchers publishing in prestigious journals, including flagship titles from the American Geophysical Union (AGU), Chemistry Europe, the American Cancer Society, and the Advanced series of titles, will benefit from increased visibility for their latest research.

“This pilot agreement will make it more affordable for UC authors to publish open access with Wiley, a significant publisher for UC,” said Jeffrey MacKie-Mason, University Librarian, Chief Digital Scholarship Officer, and Professor at UC Berkeley and co-chair of UC’s publisher negotiation team. “We welcome the opportunity presented by this pilot to explore how UC and Wiley can work together to achieve UC’s aim of open access to its scholarship.”

Open access is a rapidly growing publishing model that allows peer-reviewed articles to be read, shared and re-used immediately, allowing faster knowledge transfer and application of important research results into new technologies, therapies, public policy, and beyond. Research published under the agreement will be accessible without barriers, enabling a wider dissemination of information among academics and the public alike, at a time when public health, environmental challenges, food and energy security, and a host of pressing, global issues require evidence-based solutions rooted in science.

Springer Nature today announces a second Transformative Agreement (TA) to include its flagship title Nature. The agreement with the Bibsam Consortium in Sweden enables researchers affiliated with 10 initial institutions to publish their research articles accepted for publication in Nature and the Nature Research journals immediately open access (OA). This is at no cost to the individual researchers, as OA costs are covered by the consortium deal. 

This new agreement builds on Springer Nature and Bibsam’s long-standing OA partnership which also sees their existing 2019 agreement renewed and extended. This will now not only cover OA publishing in Springer Nature’s fully OA journals and over 2,000 hybrid journals, but also include Palgrave and Academic journals, providing even more options for Swedish authors across more disciplines. Participating institutions will also have access to extended subscribed content. 

Carrie Webster, VP Open Access, Springer Nature, commented: “We are incredibly proud that our current agreement with Bibsam has enabled over 90% of research content to be published OA, covering a large proportion of Sweden’s research output. This demonstrates the crucial role TA’s are playing in making publicly funded research immediately and openly accessible to all on publication, and enabling entire countries’ research output to flip to OA.” 

“Bibsam is a longstanding partner of ours in enabling and supporting a sustainable OA transition. We are delighted to be able to renew and extend our current TA and offer our second TA for Nature – it marks an exciting moment in our joint OA journey and support for global research.”

Anna Lundén, Acting Director, Libraries Collaboration and Research Support Department, National Library of Sweden said: “We are very pleased to have extended our partnership further with Springer Nature in order to support researchers in Sweden in the transition to open access. This new agreement with Springer Nature offers the opportunity to publish primary research articles in Nature, and the Nature Research journals, covering the costs for Swedish researchers to publish OA”.

The volume of OA articles achieved with this renewal and additional Nature TA, combined with the fact that OA articles are downloaded on average six times more than non-OA articles and cited 1.6 times more, means even greater reach and impact for Swedish researchers and Sweden-funded research. Lead author Melanie During of Uppsala University in Sweden has already benefited from the impact of the agreement, authoring the first OA paper in Nature published as part of the deal. The paper which pinpointed the season that marked the end of the dinosaur era generated over 700 global news stories and has already been accessed over 32,000 times.

Speaking of the value and impact OA has had on their paper, Melanie During commented: “We believe that for the general public to understand and have more trust in science, having easy access to research, is the first step. We therefore wanted to make sure that everyone can read our work, access and download our data and study what we did. And we can see that this is happening. Within a week our paper has been read 32,000 times and almost 80% of our readers belong to the general public, which is amazing!”

Since OA options were introduced for Nature and the Nature Research Journals, Springer Nature has entered into discussions around TAs for the portfolio with existing partners. These can take time due to the selectivity of the portfolio, the uniqueness of the non-primary research content in these journals, and the level of publishing in different institutions and countries. TA’s are not a one size fits all approach. The Nature TA for Bibsam is the second that the publisher has agreed, following Max Planck Digital Library ( MPDL). Finding a sustainable transitional model with Bibsam is therefore a key indication of the publisher’s commitment to further enabling OA publishing for its flagship title.

Springer Nature continues to support all authors regardless of discipline, location or funding, to publish OA. The publisher’s 17 national agreements, which alongside its institutional deals, now support researchers from over 2,650 affiliated institutions to publish OA, enabling an expected 41,400+ OA articles to be published a year, 10% more than any other publisher. Last year, the publisher was the first to immediately publish one million gold open access primary research and review articles, supporting nearly 2.5 million authors in making their research OA. 

The Microbiology Society and Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMCAS) are pleased to announce their transformative agreement starting in 2022. The Publish and Read model will allow researchers at affiliated institutions to publish an unlimited number of Open Access (OA) articles in hybrid and fully OA titles, as well as having full read access to the Society’s journals portfolio.

Hua Xiang, Ph.D, Professor & Deputy Director-General, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences: “To support Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMCAS) authors, we are happy to have signed this publish and read agreement with the Microbiology Society. This agreement will support the open, international exchange of research in microbiology.”

Peter Cotgreave, Chief Executive of the Microbiology Society: “We are very pleased to announce this agreement with Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences – the largest microbiological research institution in China and historically one of the most prolific institutes worldwide choosing to publish its high quality research in our journals. This deal demonstrates the reach of the Society’s model for sustainable Open Access and its relevance internationally to academic and government institutions, facilitating Open Access for more researchers across the globe.”

The number of international institutions opting into Publish and Read agreements with the Society has doubled year-on-year since its launch in 2020. 

Affiliated authors with Publish and Read institutions are entitled to:

• Unlimited OA publishing: any article published in Society journals where the corresponding author is from a Publish and Read institution will be OA by default.
• Unlimited usage: any user associated with a Publish and Read institution can access the entire archive of Society content, back to 1947, for reading and for text and data mining.

Authors can check if their institution is eligible here.

Publish and Read will be across all the Society’s six journals, including hybrid titles Microbiology, Journal of General Virology, Journal of Medical Microbiology, International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology, and fully OA titles Access Microbiology, Microbial Genomics.