Global research and education leader Wiley today announced a three-year open access agreement with the National Research Council of Science and Technology (NST), in the Republic of Korea.

The agreement, which marks Wiley’s first in East Asia, will enable researchers at 25 institutions across the Republic of Korea to publish accepted articles open access in Wiley’s hybrid journals. By partnering with the NST, more research published by Korean scientists will be freely available for researchers and the public alike.

“We continue to see momentum for open access globally, and this agreement shows the progress being made in the Republic of Korea,” said Liz Ferguson, Senior Vice President, Wiley Research Publishing. “It’s a pleasure to partner with the NST in support of increasing accessibility and exposure to the fundamental and life-changing contributions of thousands of researchers across the Republic of Korea to the scholarly record.”

NST’s chairman, Bok Chul Kim said, in relation to the agreement, “Through this transformational agreement between NST and Wiley, we expect to be able to raise the international profile of Korean governmental research institutes. By allowing anyone from around the world to access the research outputs of NST member institutions, without any barriers or restrictions, we hope to contribute to the growing global open access movement and promote more organic exchanges of knowledge between Korean and international researchers through a continuous collaboration with Wiley.”

This agreement follows on the heels of Wiley’s record-setting year of open access agreements, with 12 new agreements signed in 2021. These agreements alone impact more than 300 institutions globally and will add an anticipated 15,000 new articles to the scholarly record.” 

The MIT Press releases report on the development of the Direct to Open model: A roadmap for supporting open access monographs

The MIT Press Open Monograph Model: Direct to Open, a new white paper published by Chain Bridge Group and the MIT Press, describes a collective model for supporting the open dissemination of scholarly monographs. The report examines the context for designing the framework and explains the logic behind the model’s design.

The MIT Press, supported by a grant from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, has developed and implemented a business model capable of disseminating the Press’s scholarly monographs open access. The framework, christened Direct to Open (D2O), is designed to induce support by balancing the dual motivations of academic research libraries: the value of private benefits, exclusive to contributing institutions, and mission-aligned support for open business models.

“Direct to Open is a much-needed alternative to traditional market-based business models for scholarly titles,” said Amy Brand, director and publisher of the MIT Press. “We are thrilled to share this report so that libraries and not-for-profit scholarly publishers may benefit from the findings and the framework that we have developed.”

Researched and written by Raym Crow, managing partner at the Chain Bridge Group, the report describes the success criteria and strategic objectives that drove D2O’s design. It explores the economic logic and organizational issues that affect the funding of open resources. The report goes on to describe a D2O prototype model that addresses the Press’s specific design requirements. It concludes with a consideration of D2O in the context of other open monograph models.

Launched in the spring of 2021, D2O has already reached the 55% participation threshold against its three-year target, with over 180 libraries committing to making knowledge more open and equitable. The University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of Groningen, and Bowdoin College recently signed-on as a partner libraries. Due to the support of participating institutions, the full list of spring 2022 scholarly monographs and edited collections from the MIT Press will be published open access.

“UMass Amherst Libraries are keenly pursuing investments in open access publishing that align with our Framework for Provider Agreement goals to ensure the widest possible use, discovery, and preservation of scholarship; contain costs and provide flexibility for expenditures; lessen the transactional and financial burdens of publication for our scholars; and foster an open scholarship culture inclusive of equitable representation by people from diverse perspectives and backgrounds,” said Christine Turner, scholarly communication librarian at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “The MIT Press Direct to Open program meets our goals, and we’re excited about its prospects for our authors, researchers, and students.”

The MIT Press Open Monograph Model: Direct to Open has been published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

To download a copy of the white paper, or to sign up for future news and alerts, visit https://direct.mit.edu/books/pages/direct-to-open-report.

The Public Library of Science (PLOS) today announced that PLOS Digital Health published its initial cohort of papers. PLOS announced the launch of five new journals last year and PLOS Digital Health is the second of these journals with papers ready for publication. The journal’s mission is to drive transformation in the delivery of equitable and unbiased healthcare through ethically conducted, impactful and immediately accessible research. The journal will accept papers from our diverse community of researchers, which will include engineers, social scientists and industry leaders among others. The journal has so far received nearly 150 submissions from researchers around the world.

“More relevant than contributing to the field of digital health, I hope PLOS Digital Health will spearhead a movement among journals to take a more proactive role in diversifying the research community and re-drawing the unequal map of the medical knowledge system,” said Editor-in-Chief, Leo Anthony Celi, PLOS Digital Health. “We cannot address health disparities without tackling knowledge inequalities between rich and poor countries.”

“PLOS Digital Health centers Open Science practices; for example, preprinting, open data and open code,” said Suzanne Farley, Editorial Director, PLOS. “Embedding Open Science practices in emerging fields like digital health ensures their outputs can be relied upon to drive positive change in healthcare.”

All PLOS journals are underpinned by institutional business models that move beyond the article processing charge (APC) to ensure more equitable and regionally appropriate ways to support Open Access publishing. PLOS Digital Heath utilizes our Flat Fee model. PLOS will waive the annual fee if a member institution is in a Research4Life country. Our existing fee-assistance program also supports authors who are unable to pay any portion of their publication fees.

Our current Editorial Board is composed of more than 30 editors representing 15 countries, including 12 Section Editors, and reflects PLOS’ commitments towards building diverse, equitable and inclusive editorial boards. PLOS Digital Health’s nearly 150 submissions came from 33 countries.

Here are links to three of the 10 papers that PLOS Digital Health just published, as well as two opinion pieces and one Review:

• Open challenges in developing digital therapeutics
• Why “Data for Good” isn’t working yet
• Ideal Algorithms in Health Care: Explainable, Dynamic, Precise, Autonomous, Fair, and Reproducible
• Mobile phone-based interventions for mental health: A systematic meta-review of 14 meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials
• A proteomic survival predictor for COVID-19 patients in intensive care
  Applied machine learning for the risk-stratification and clinical decision support of hospitalised patients with dengue in Vietnam

For more information about PLOS Digital Health, visit the homepage.

The Company of Biologists is delighted to announce a new three-year Read & Publish Open Access agreement with the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL).

The agreement commenced on 1 January 2022 and CAUL-member institutions in Australia and New Zealand can sign up on an annual basis in 2022, 2023 and 2024.

Researchers at participating institutions will be able to publish an uncapped number of articles immediately Open Access (OA) in The Company of Biologists’ prestigious hybrid journals – Development, Journal of Cell Science and Journal of Experimental Biology – without paying an article processing charge (APC). They will also benefit from unlimited access to the journals, including the full archive dating back to 1853.

Institutions also have the option to include uncapped APC-free publishing in The Company of Biologists’ fully Open Access journals – Disease Models & Mechanisms and Biology Open – in their Read & Publish agreement.

Angus Cook, Director, Content Procurement at CAUL, says:“Having a Read & Publish agreement with The Company of Biologists, commencing in 2022, is an important continuation of CAUL’s progression to providing broader Open Access arrangements via consortium agreements. The agreement is useful not only for the access it gives to content across the biological sciences used by CAUL members, but also the ability to publish OA in these subject areas which will be highly valued for locally produced research. Agreements with organisations such as The Company of Biologists also confirm CAUL’s commitment to work with publishers of all sizes.”

Rich Blount, Regional Sales Manager at The Company of Biologists, says:

“We are very excited to have signed our first ever consortium agreement with CAUL, particularly as it is also our first agreement in the Asia-Pacific region. Nine institutions in Australia and New Zealand were already participating in our Read & Publish initiative in 2021, and we hope that this new agreement will encourage many more to do so in 2022.”

Claire Moulton, Publisher at The Company of Biologists, says:“The Company of Biologists has been committed to Open Access publishing since 2004 and we have a track record of innovation. Our journals were the first in the world to be awarded Transformative Journal status by Plan S. Researchers at over 400 institutions in more than 30 countries are benefitting from APC-free OA publishing through our cost-neutral Read & Publish initiative, and we exceeded our public commitment to grow OA content by 5% during 2021. We welcome our new partnership with CAUL and look forward to working together to further accelerate OA publishing in the biological and biomedical sciences in Australia and New Zealand.”

Society publisher IOP Publishing (IOPP) and the Consortium of Swiss Academic Libraries have agreed a three year ‘read and publish’ deal, providing access to journal content alongside unlimited open access publishing for academics at member institutions. 

Researchers from the 19 participating Swiss institutions will be able to publish unlimited papers in all of IOPP’s research journals as well as many society partner journals. Their article publishing charges will be managed centrally via this agreement.  

It is the first such agreement for IOPP with the Swiss Consortium and a positive step in support of open access since the agreement offers unlimited open access publishing. 

Dr. Rafael Ball, Director of ETH Library which will benefit from the new contract comments: “We are excited to work with IOPP as this agreement provides our researchers with the confidence that all their physical sciences research will be published open access in some of the most renowned journals in the field.”  

Miriam Maus, publishing director at IOP Publishing adds: “We are delighted to have secured this agreement with the Swiss Consortium as it will enable academics to broaden the reach and impact of their research with the knowledge that their work is published in a funder compliant way.”  

IOP Publishing is committed to making scientific research openly available as much as possible and has published 8200 (26%) of all their articles OA in 2021. 

PeerJ is pleased to announce an agreement with Iowa State University (ISU) to join the Three-Year Fixed Term Memberships Pilot Program, which will provide ISU faculty with a high quality and sustainable Open Access publishing option. Under the agreement, the Iowa State University Library will cover the cost of three-year memberships in their entirety, which means that there will be no out-of-pocket fees for ISU authors to publish in the PeerJ journal portfolio. 

“We are delighted to welcome the ISU community to the program and are excited for their authors to enjoy the PeerJ experience,” said Nathaniel Gore, PeerJ’s Director of Communities. “We are grateful that the staff at the university’s library see PeerJ Memberships for what they are: beneficial to their researchers, and a cost-effective approach to Open Access.”

“The Iowa State University Library is committed to providing open access publishing support to our authors. The PeerJ Membership pilot is a great way for us to do so at a reasonable cost and with an innovative publisher.” said Curtis Brundy, Iowa State University Associate University Librarian for Scholarly Communication and Collections.

PeerJ Three Year Fixed Term Memberships, priced at $239 per author, are valid for 36 months from the date of an author’s first publication, during which they can publish two more articles at no additional cost. This arrangement gives authors more flexibility as to when they publish. When authors use their full complement of three publications, the per-author cost borne by ISU averages out at under $80 per article. Under the agreement, any co-authors must hold a PeerJ membership in order to publish; any Lifetime Memberships held by ISU-affiliated authors remain valid. 

“PeerJ remains committed to promoting Memberships as the low-cost, sustainable alternative to Article Processing Charges (APCs),” said PeerJ’s Publisher and Co-Founder Pete Binfield. “We believe that our Membership options provide the best value for money to the communities who choose to publish with us, and we look forward to working with ISU’s community of researchers across our seven journals.” 

ISU is the third North American institution to join the program, along with University of California, Berkeley and the University of Ottawa. PeerJ welcomes discussions with other institutions interested in joining ISU, UC Berkeley and University of Ottawa in the pilot program. Interested Librarians and Open Access Managers should contact communities@peerj.com for more information.