PLOS renews publishing agreement with the Bibsam consortium in Sweden

PLOS is pleased to announce its renewal of an agreement with the Bibsam Consortium to participate in PLOS’ three innovative publishing models. This two-year agreement, effective on Jan 1, 2024, provides researchers from affiliated institutions with unlimited publishing privileges in PLOS journals without incurring fees. The new agreement covers authors throughout Sweden from more than 90 institutions.

The Bibsam consortium is operated by the National Library of Sweden and is supported by the research funders Swedish Research Council, Forte, Formas, and Vinnova that have all made a strategic decision on a funding model to support publication with publishers that exclusively publish fully open access journals.

PLOS institutional business models such as Community Action Publishing (CAP)[1] and Global Equity ensure more equitable and regionally appropriate ways to support Open Access publishing.

“The renewal of the Bibsam Consortium agreement demonstrates our commitment with institutions to collaborate and invest equitably in the advancement of Open Science,” said Roheena Anand, Executive Director of Global Publishing Development & Sales at PLOS.  “Bibsam shares our intention of building business models that will move researchers and journals toward a more equitable and barrier free form of publishing.”

Participating institutions include, Karolinska Institute, Linköping University, Linnaeus University, Mälardalen University, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm University, Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, University of Gothenburg, University of Gävle, Uppsala University, Lund University, Örebro University and 80 others.

The Bibsam Consortium is one of many institutions that have signed publishing agreements with PLOS, including the Big Ten Academic Alliance, the University of California system, Jisc (including University College London, Imperial College London, University of Manchester),  NorthEast Research Libraries (NERL) and the Center for Research Libraries, the Canadian Research Knowledge Network among others.

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