The Public Library of Science (PLOS) and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) today announced an expansion of their longstanding partnership to offer authors more options for rapidly and easily sharing their research before publication in a journal. Beginning this month, three PLOS journals, PLOS Medicine, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, and PLOS ONE, will offer authors the option to have their manuscript automatically forwarded to the preprint server medRxiv for posting as a preprint. 

The practice of sharing preprints is becoming more prevalent in medicine, with more preprints posted since the beginning of 2020 than in the four previous years combined. The COVID-19 pandemic has driven much of the increase in preprint sharing in medicine, and demonstrated the benefits of rapidly and responsibly sharing findings prior to traditional peer review.

“Since 2018, through our partnership with CSHL, we have posted thousands of manuscripts as preprints on bioRxiv on behalf of researchers in the biological sciences,” said Veronique Kiermer, Chief Scientific Officer, PLOS. “I believe that our support, as publishers, has helped authors gain the confidence to share their results before formal publication. We are delighted to be extending this service to authors in the medical sciences, allowing important research results to be shared early and responsibly to accelerate research. It has never been more important.”

“PLOS has been a much valued partner in bioRxiv’s transformation of communication among bioscientists,” said John Inglis, co-founder of medRxiv and bioRxiv at CSHL. “The further support of such an innovative publisher for medRxiv’s service to the health science research community is immensely encouraging.”

The medRxiv preprint server was launched by CSHL in June 2019 as a not-for-profit, community-based author service that is publisher-independent but integrated with many journals.  It currently hosts more than 27,500 manuscripts from 153,000 researchers in 140 countries. PLOS is the first publisher to implement this “journal-to-medRxiv” integration via the Editorial Manager journal submission system and at the scale of PLOS ONE. PLOS ONE alone received more than 19,000 submissions in Public Health and Medicine in 2020.

Responsible preprint posting is essential, especially in fields that impact public health and welfare. MedRxiv has worked closely with the editors of leading medical journals to develop a rigorous preprint screening process. In-house screening looks for nonscientific content, plagiarism, potentially identifying patient details, and ethical approval statements, while volunteer researchers with relevant expertise assess each preprint to confirm that posting will not pose a risk to patients or public health.

PLOS is committed to enhancing the integrity of preprints and confidence in them as research outputs. A key part of its mission has been to act as a catalyst, not only demonstrating the viability of new models through its own operations but also supporting them elsewhere. PLOS has been successful in steadily increasing adoption of preprints by its authors. 14% of all PLOS papers published in 2020 have an associated preprint, a figure that is driven largely by authors of Life Science studies who have used our integration with bioRxiv. PLOS receives an even greater volume of submissions in public health and medicine, and adding medRxiv alongside our existing bioRxiv integration will extend the ease of facilitated posting to more researchers around the world. 

The Company’s journals Development, Journal of Cell Science and Journal of Experimental Biology have exceeded their Open Access growth targets in their first year as Transformative Journals.

The Company of Biologists has offered Open Access publishing options since 2004 and two of its five journals are already fully Open Access. The other three journals – Development, Journal of Cell Science and Journal of Experimental Biology – were the very first ones to be awarded Transformative Journal status by Plan S.

The Transformative Journal strategy signals clearly the journals’ commitment to move towards full Open Access, while a transition period allows them to provide publishing options that support all authors through this change in the publishing landscape.

Transformative Journals proactively champion Open Access publishing and have Open Access growth targets. Over the 2021-2024 transition period, the three journals aim to grow the proportion of Open Access research content by at least 5% year-on-year in absolute terms. For 2021, these targets were not only met, but they were exceeded, with Development’s Open Access research content growing by around 10%, Journal of Cell Science by around 12% and Journal of Experimental Biology growing by around 15%. 

This Open Access growth was driven by our Read & Publish agreements, which allow corresponding authors at participating institutions to publish Open Access Research Articles without paying a publication fee. Over 400 institutions in over 30 countries are currently participating in our Read & Publish Open Access initiative.

“We are delighted to announce that all three journals have exceeded their Transformative Journals targets in 2021,” said Claire Moulton, Publisher at The Company of Biologists. “With our Read & Publish initiative being an important driver, this has been a true team effort, involving not only our own teams, but also hard work and dedication from others in the community, including our valued library and consortia partners. The Transformative Journal approach helps us to work towards making research accessible to everyone in a way that allows us to support our wide community of authors along the way.”

Having reached more than double the target growth in 2021, some have argued, could make next year’s targets harder to reach. While this may be the case, we still feel this is a great step forward in our transition towards Open Access. Our target is to grow our OA Research content by at least a further 5% in 2022. Keeping up this momentum in OA growth requires real change in the marketplace. We continue to work with our library and consortia partners to explore expansion of our Read & Publish agreements – and we call for more support from funders and institutions through well-funded OA mandates – to enable authors to publish more Open Access content. We will keep our stakeholders informed of our Transformative Journal progress on our website and through our journals.

Further information available at: www.biologists.com/transformative-journals and www.biologists.com/read-publish.

The Public Library of Science (PLOS) is pleased to announce an agreement with Sachsen Consortia to facilitate unlimited publishing across all 12 PLOS titles with no fees for researchers. This agreement encompasses PLOS’ three innovative publishing models, ensuring researchers from 9 Saxon institutions benefit from frictionless, fee-free publishing with PLOS. This agreement represents PLOS’ second major consortia deal in the European Union.

“We are excited to expand our consortia footprint to Germany with these new publishing models, which enable more researchers to participate in advancing Open Science,” said Sara Rouhi, Director of Strategic Partnerships for PLOS. “Sachsen Consortia share our commitment to make scholarly publishing and research open and equitable for the benefit of all.”

“A central goal of open access transformation is to enable an uncomplicated publication process with transparent and fair conditions, taking into account the rules of good scientific practice”, said Karolin Bove, Head of Collection Development and Metadata Department, Saxon State and University Library Dresden.

All PLOS journals are underpinned by existing – and new – 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’ institutional models are Community Action Publishing (CAP)^[1], Flat Fees ^[2], and the Global Equity model^[3].

Institutions participating in this agreement include , Technische Universität Dresden including University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus, Universität Leipzig including Universitätsklinikum  Leipzig, Leipzig University of Applied Sciences, Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg, University of Technology Chemnitz, Mittweida University of Applied Sciences,  Dresden University of Applied Sciences, Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences and the University of Applied Sciences Zwickau.

Members of Sachsen Consortia led by the Saxon State and University Library join a growing list of institutions including the Big Ten Academic Alliance, the University of California system, CRL and NERL, Jisc (including University College London, Imperial College London, University of Manchester) and the Canadian Research Knowledge Network among others to support their researchers through publishing deals with PLOS.

The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) recently honored PLOS as the 2021 co-winner for Innovation in Publishing for its Community Action Publishing model.

^[1] Participating journals include PLOS Biology, PLOS Medicine and PLOS Sustainability and Transformation

^[2] Participating journals include PLOS Digital Health, PLOS ONE, PLOS Computational Biology, PLOS Pathogens, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases and PLOS Genetics

^[3] Participating journals include PLOS Climate, PLOS Water, PLOS Global Public Health

eLife is pleased to announce today that its four funders, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the Max Planck Society and Wellcome, are extending their support for the non-profit organisation. The new investment will boost eLife’s efforts to openly review and curate research published as preprints.

eLife is transforming research communication to create a future with a diverse, global community of scientists producing trusted and open results for the benefit of all. The open-access eLife journal was the first step in this initiative. Now, in response to the increasing popularity of preprints, the organisation has moved to a new ‘publish, then review’ model of scientific publishing that emphasises preprints and public reviews.

“We’re delighted that our funders have agreed to invest further in eLife and the ‘publish, then review’ model of science,” says Toby Coppel, Chair of eLife’s Board of Directors and Partner at Mosaic Ventures in London. “Everything that eLife is doing to improve publishing, technology and research culture reflects the strong change agenda of these and other research funders, and we look forward to continuing our work with their support. We cannot express enough gratitude for their ongoing support of an open future for scientific publishing.”

The new funding will allow eLife to advance its vision for a system of curation around preprints that replaces journal titles as the primary trust indicator of a paper’s perceived quality and impact. As part of this vision, a dedicated team within eLife is developing the Sciety platform that brings preprint evaluation and curation together in one place, helping people navigate the growing preprint landscape.

Cheryl Moore, Director of Research Programmes at Wellcome, says: “We support the development of new technology that allows publishers to operate journals based on the review and curation of preprints, as this model clearly holds tremendous benefits for science and research. As such, we’re pleased to back eLife’s work on projects such as these that aim to improve the culture and practices of scientific publishing.”

Erin O’Shea, President of HHMI, adds: “From the beginning, eLife has worked to overcome old publishing constraints, making it possible for researchers to communicate new science efficiently. We’re pleased with eLife’s innovations and look forward to continuing to support shared efforts to make research communication more open and beneficial for all.”

The Max Planck Society – eLife’s third founding partner after HHMI and Wellcome – and Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation have also renewed their funding with interest in eLife’s open-source technology innovations to enhance the communication and use of research results online.

Ulman Lindenberger, Vice President of the Human Sciences Section of the Max Planck Society, and a representative on eLife’s Board of Directors, says: “The Max Planck Society strives towards making scientific results easily accessible. We and eLife share the view that there is an ongoing need for innovation in scientific publishing, including the search for more efficient ways of assessment and dissemination. We look forward to continuing our work with eLife over the coming years.”

Siv Andersson, Director of Basic Research at Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, adds: “The development of new technologies and models to ensure rapid publication and evaluation of scientific results in an open manner will be of great benefit to all. We are pleased to support the continued development of principles and platforms that provide added value to scientific publishing.”

With the new funding, eLife will meet its 10-year milestone next year in a strong position. eLife’s Editor-in-Chief Michael Eisen has expressed his gratitude to all of the funders for their backing. “The new model for the publication, review and curation of preprints is the future of science publishing,” he says. “We’re grateful for the support of our funders that has allowed us to be at the head of this movement, and excited to work with our community of researchers on this essential endeavour.”

For details on eLife’s progress from 2012 to 2020, please see our annual reports.