PeerJ Inc. (https://PeerJ.com), the publisher of PeerJ (a peer reviewed Open Access journal) and PeerJ PrePrints (a preprint server) today announced the first four universities to enter into an institutional arrangement to centrally fund PeerJ membership fees for their faculty.
“We have seen a lot of interest from institutions in the PeerJ model”, said Peter Binfield, Publisher and Co-Founder of PeerJ. “Our membership fees are already very low for individual authors, and so this means that an institution is able to centrally fund the memberships of a large number of faculty and authors for a very low outlay. Literally, for the price of one year’s access to two or three subscription journals, a library can make a single payment and provide PeerJ memberships to hundreds of their faculty. And those memberships are for life, meaning that the faculty can then publish with PeerJ for free, forever.”
Universities who have already entered into these arrangements for their faculty include Duke University, the University of Nottingham (UK), the University of Birmingham (UK), and Arizona State University.
“The University of Nottingham is a longstanding advocate of open access publishing, and we are delighted to be working with PeerJ” said Rob Johnson, of the University of Nottingham. “Their publication model offers a genuine and affordable alternative to authors and academic institutions seeking to secure free access to their research.”
Anali Perry of Arizona State University Libraries said that “PeerJ is breaking ground with an innovative publishing platform and business model, presenting an affordable, high quality option for researchers in the biological, medical, and health sciences. The Arizona State University Libraries are pleased to support PeerJ’s creative effort in scholarly publishing.”
PeerJ emphasizes research integrity; high ethical standards; constructive peer-review; exemplary production quality; and leading edge online functionality. The journal is indexed by PubMed, PubMed Central (PMC), Scopus and Google Scholar. There is an Editorial Board of over 800 world class researchers, and a 20-member Advisory Board which includes 5 Nobel Laureates. In addition, PeerJ members benefit from the ability to publish articles in PeerJ PrePrints.
Institutions can choose to purchase individual memberships for their authors in advance (and distribute them as they choose), or they can pre-pay for memberships which are then used by their faculty as and when they come to publish at PeerJ. Both options allow an institution to provide an Open Access option to a large number of their authors, in an extremely cost effective way.
Any Institution, Library, Consortia, Foundation or Funding Body interested in discussing one of these arrangements can contact PeerJ at info@peerj.com or via their website at https://peerj.com/pricing/institutions/
