The De Gruyter eBound Foundation is pleased to announce a major milestone for University Press Library Open (UPLOpen), its comprehensive open access initiative and eBook platform. Launched in April 2024 with a goal of drawing attention to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), UPLOpen now hosts 10,000 open access titles from more than 50 prestigious academic publishers. 

The diverse collection of titles on UPLOpen cover a wide range of disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. A large number of these are new or recently published titles. Over 1,800 have a copyright date of 2023 or later. Among the publishers represented in UPLOpen are Chicago, Cornell, Duke, NYU, Penn, Stanford, Toronto, De Gruyter, Edinburgh, Manchester, London School of Economics (LSE), Helsinki, and Stockholm. UPLOpen is also home to two unique and complete series collections: Luminos, from the University of California Press, and Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem (TOME), a five-year pilot project of the Association of American Universities, Association of Research Libraries, and Association of University Presses. 

Visitors to UPLOpen will also notice a number of other important enhancements to the site. These include: 

1. Expanded user functionality. In response to feedback and the growing demand for a more intuitive and efficient search experience, UPLOpen’s expanded search capability enables users to find relevant content based on the meaning and context of their queries, rather than just keyword matches. 
2. Enhanced metric data. Visitors have access to enhanced usage metrics via the OPERAS metrics platform, a leading tool for tracking the impact and reach of open access publications. Developed by Ubiquity for OPERAS, this integration enables greater insight into how content is being accessed and used, supporting data-driven decision-making and further promoting the value of open access publishing. 
3. Greater discoverability. The UPLO collection is now available in library knowledge bases including OCLC, EBSCO, and Ex Libris. In addition, MARC records for the entire UPLOpen collection are available for bulk download. 

Peter Potter, Executive Director of De Gruyter eBound confirms that “the growing number of titles, the enhanced functionality, and improved discoverability on UPLOpen are all designed to meet the evolving needs of users wherever they are in the world. These advancements reflect our ongoing commitment to supporting the open access movement and ensuring that academic research is accessible to everyone, regardless of geographical or institutional barriers.” 

“A large part of my career has been focused on global open access and UPLOpen is not only underscoring that need but also providing it,” said Curtis Brundy, Associate University Librarian for Scholarly Communications and Collections at Iowa State University. “This is a big achievement for the scholarly community.” 

Jane Bunker, Director of Cornell University Press, expressed gratitude for the platform. “These milestones are incredibly beneficial to everyone in the scholarly publishing landscape – not just libraries, but also publishers. Having user data readily at hand means we can approach publishing content with a different eye.”

Knowledge Unlatched (KU), a Wiley brand, is collaborating with LibLynx to enhance the delivery of comprehensive usage analytics for Open Access (OA) scholarly publications. LibLynx’s innovative Touchstone analytics solution, developed in partnership with PSI Metrics, will enable libraries worldwide to assess the impact of thousands of OA titles made available through KU’s library crowdfunding initiatives.

As a global leader in curating and supporting the publishing of peer-reviewed OA content, KU works with publishers and libraries to make scholarly works freely accessible. Over 5,000 titles are available across platforms such as JSTOR, Project MUSE, OAPEN, and the Open Research Library (ORL). The ability to aggregate and analyze usage data from these platforms is critical for libraries to evaluate the local and global impact of these publications effectively.

Through this partnership, LibLynx will implement a data pipeline for KU, capable of collecting, standardizing, and enriching usage event data from partner platforms. The solution will provide real-time, customizable dashboards and detailed analytics reports tailored to the needs of libraries, institutional partners, and authors.

“Measuring the impact of OA publications for institutions and researchers has always been an integral part of what we do,” said Olaf Ernst, Chief Solution Officer within Wiley. “We’re delighted to partner with LibLynx, whose expertise ensures we can deliver this crucial information to our global partners effectively.”

The analytics will give libraries granular insights into their content’s usage, including data on the organizational origin of readership and engagement by title, country, organizational type, and subject area. Data can be accessed online or exported as PDFs and spreadsheets for further analysis.

“OA usage analytics are becoming increasingly complex as publishers broaden accessibility across multiple platforms,” said John Corkery, Client Engagement Director at LibLynx. “Our plug-and-play solution enables facilitators like KU to provide unified, actionable reporting for their institutional stakeholders.”

The Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovation of Serbia has adopted a new national open science (OS) policy – the Open Science Platform 2.0 – that applies to all Serbian publicly-funded research projects and programmes. 

EIFL welcomes the adoption of the policy, which significantly expands the scope of OS efforts in Serbia, and updates the country’s first national OS policy, which was adopted in 2018. 

In addition to mandating open access (OA) for publicly funded research, the new policy states that universities and research institutes must update their institutional OS policies within six months to comply with the national policy.

The policy emphasizes five key goals: (1) OA to scholarly publications; (2) availability of research data; (3) open and transparent access to research infrastructures; (4) transparency of scholarly communication and methodology, including the availability of software source code, design documentation of research hardware and other digital objects used in the analysis of research data, and (5) the development of the digital infrastructure and competencies that make it possible to achieve the goals of the policy. 

The Open Science Platform 2.0 was drafted by the Team for Open Science in Serbia (TONuS), a dedicated task force established by the Ministry, including more than 30 researchers, policy makers, funders and librarians. Compliance with the policy will be monitored using indicators that will be developed by TONuS.

THE MAIN ELEMENTS OF THE POLICY

• Mandatory OA to all publicly funded publications (including journal articles, monographs, book chapters, conference papers, and PhD theses) upon publication. Embargo periods of up to three months for natural and medical sciences and engineering, and six months for social sciences and humanities may be allowed.
• When signing publishing agreements, authors should retain the intellectual property rights necessary to enable depositing in repositories and providing OA.
• Publication fees in OA journals, monographs, conference proceedings and edited volumes are eligible only if planned in the research project or programme budget and if the publication venue has transparent editorial policies. Publication fees charged by hybrid OA publication venues, which include a mixture of OA and subscription-based articles, are not eligible for funding.
• The Ministry supports the Diamond OA publishing model, where neither authors nor readers pay fees, by recommending that authors publish their research in Diamond OA journals whenever possible and by providing subsidies only to Diamond OA journals.
• Publicly-subsidized journals, monographs and conference proceedings must follow open licensing policies.
• Research data resulting from publicly funded projects must be managed according to the FAIR principles (FAIR stands for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) and archived in FAIR-compliant repositories. Data management plans are mandatory for publicly-funded projects and programmes.
• OA to research data underlying publications is required unless legal, ethical, or contractual restrictions apply.
• The policy recommends making software source code and research hardware design documentation created through public funding openly accessible, human- and machine-readable, and licensed under open licences.
• Research infrastructures should be transparently available to researchers, with institutions ensuring clear access policies.
• Persistent identifiers (PIDs) are required for researchers (ORCID) and publications (DOI). The use of PIDs for all research outputs, instruments, and projects is recommended.
• Developing OS skills is encouraged through academic programmes, professional training and the establishment of national competency centres.
• Institutions are encouraged to introduce incentives and rewards for OS practices.

We’re pleased to once again share our annual reporting from the Plan S Journal Comparison Service to give our community insight into how our publication fees are used to support journal activities. 

Price transparency snapshot for 2023
The data in the table below reflects the reporting we provided to the Journal Comparison Service at the end of 2024 covering the year 2023. It’s based on the publication fee for a Research Article in each journal at that time and the services we provide for each article we receive (not just those which are ultimately published).

While the price breakdown among the broad categories provided by the framework remains largely the same year to year, we are always innovating to meet the needs of our communities. In 2023 we invested in processes, tools and systems to further support our high publication ethics standards, as well as strengthening our overall digital infrastructure to meet growing submissions. 

Of course, there are always variances between journals in line with differences in their editorial models and development stage. Community Development, for example, takes a greater share of the allocation for our newer journals as we continue to establish those journals in their respective fields. We encourage you to look back at our original post for more detail on key differences between our journal models.

You can find our full report from the framework in this spreadsheet.

Beyond the APC
While the data above are based on the standard publication fee for each journal, PLOS has long been working to reimagine more equitable and sustainable models for open access publishing that do not rely on APCs. Each of our journals are currently supported by institutional business models to address different challenges such as the high-cost of selective publishing and regional economic disparities.

As a non-profit organization, PLOS also works alongside researchers, librarians, and funders to redefine publishing norms and effect positive change. In 2024 we received three major grants to advance this work: a 3-year funding package from the Gates Foundation which will support PLOS during our transition to APC-free publishing and funding support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation launching our 18-month Research and Design project which seeks to transform publishing models to ensure that science is open, recognized, and accessible to all.

We’re excited to provide updates on the R&D project throughout the year. You can also find more information about our finances and strategic initiatives on our Financial Overview page.