Read & Publish Open Access initiative: number of participating institutions doubles in a year

The number of countries represented has also risen by more than 50% over the last year – from 24 to 39. We have signed new agreements with library consortia in Australia, Spain, Sweden and the United States and, following a successful two-year pilot, we signed a three-year renewal agreement with Jisc in the UK.

The success of our Read & Publish initiative has contributed to a significant growth in the proportion of OA research content in our hybrid journals – Development, Journal of Cell Science and Journal of Experimental Biology.

The journals were the first in the world to be afforded Transformative Journal status by Plan S and all three exceeded their targets for OA growth in 2021.

Our hybrid journals are on track to meet their Transformative Journal targets in 2022 and this takes us closer to our goal of converting them to full OA.

Building on the success of the initiative, libraries can now also include our fully Open Access journals – Disease Models & Mechanisms and Biology Open – in their Read & Publish agreements.

Claire Moulton, Publisher, The Company of Biologists: “We are thrilled that our Read & Publish Open Access initiative is continuing to go from strength to strength and that over 500 institutions in 39 countries are now participating. We would like to thank our library customers for their tremendous support in helping us to exceed our Transformative Journal targets for OA growth and thereby enabling us to move closer to our goal of flipping our journals to full OA.”

Online announcement and more information available at: https://www.biologists.com/library-hub/news/read-publish-500-institutions/