Open Access

We are delighted to announce that MDPI has extended its agreement with the Jisc consortium in the UK for 2025. This renewal reaffirms our strong partnership with UK institutions, emphasizing our shared commitment to advancing open access publishing and ensuring broad accessibility to high-quality research.

Dutch universities, research institutes and Elsevier, a global leader in scientific information and analytics, have signed new agreements to support Dutch research, starting 1 January 2025 and running for two years with an optional extension for a third year.

IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for humanity, announced today that it has reached an unlimited read and publish open access agreement with the Coordenacao de Aperfeicoamento de Pessoal de Nivel Superior (CAPES), a federal agency within the Brazilian Ministry of Education, to support researchers who choose to publish via open access.

New data released by Springer Nature shows the immediate impact Transformative Agreements (TA) have on driving global open access (OA) output, with some countries seeing increases in OA uptake of up to 78% in the first year of their TA.  

University Libraries has entered into a new “read and publish” agreement with the Royal Society of Chemistry, beginning Jan. 1. In addition to subscription access to the complete package of RSC journals, the agreement provides for Open Access publishing in RSC journals by corresponding authors affiliated with any NU campus, at no cost to themselves. 

ResearchGate, the professional network for researchers, and Sage, a global academic publisher of books, journals, and a growing suite of library products and services, has announced a renewal of their Journal Home partnership. The renewed agreement will see a diverse selection of Sage’s open access and an addition of hybrid journals accessible through Journal Home, growing visibility and engagement through ResearchGate’s 25m+ active researcher members globally

More than 100 German universities and research institutions have entered into a national agreement with MDPI. The publication agreement negotiated by ZB MED comes into effect on 1 January 2025 and is valid until the end of 2026. Joining the consortium is still possible until the beginning of 2025.

PLOS has been awarded a $3.3million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, underscoring its commitment to pioneer a shift away from traditional publishing models. The 3-year funding package from the Gates Foundation will support PLOS’ transition towards APC-free publishing by enabling authors, funded by the foundation, to publish with PLOS without facing APC barriers, and to contribute to open access publishing options for authors who do not have access to funding

EDP Sciences is pleased to announce its renewed commitment to Research4Life, an initiative that provides vital research content to institutions in lower- and middle-income countries covered by the programme. As part of this recommitment, EDP Sciences will continue to offer free or low-cost access to its journals for these institutions, and will provide free publication for Group A countries.

New analysis suggests that open data practice is now on the edge of becoming a standard, recognised and supported scholarly output, globally. As part of the latest in the State of Open Data series, produced by partners Digital Science, Figshare and Springer Nature, direct author-sharing practices have been analysed from a funder, country and institutional level.

The Company of Biologists is delighted to announce the renewal of our Read & Publish Open Access agreement with Jisc, the UK digital, data and technology agency focused on tertiary education, research and innovation.

Today, the MIT Press is releasing a comprehensive report that addresses how open access policies shape research and what is needed to maximize their positive impact on the research ecosystem. The report, entitled “Access to Science & Scholarship 2024: Building an Evidence Base to Support the Future of Open Research Policy,” is the outcome of a National Science Foundation-funded workshop held at the D.C. headquarters of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on September 20, 2024.