Open Access

The Spanish research community’s growing commitment to open access publishing has been bolstered by the announcement of a new agreement between the Consortium of Catalan University Services (Consorci de Serveis Universitaris de Catalunya, CSUC) and gold open access publisher Frontiers.

Knowledge Unlatched (KU), the international initiative for Open Access (OA), is pleased to announce the launch of the ninth round of funding today, which has to date helped publish over 3,000 scholarly books and 50 journals OA in a wide range of HSS and STEM fields. This year’s pledging options include KU’s flagship collection well-known to librarians, KU Select Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) Books, and several new collections developed in partnerships with renowned academic publishers and university presses.

The Company of Biologists is delighted to announce a three-year Read & Publish Open Access agreement with the Bibsam Consortium which runs from 1 January 2022 to 31 December 2024.

UK institutions are in negotiation with Springer Nature to secure a transitional open access (OA) agreement for the Nature, Nature research journals and Palgrave journals. A proposal that meets the requirements of the sector has not yet been provided.

The East African Science and Technology Commission (EASTECO), the Public Library of Science (PLOS), and the Training Centre in Communication (TCC Africa) today announced that they will collaborate in the implementation of Open Science and Open Access principles for EAC Partner States, which include Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, United Republic of Tanzania, Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda.

The Publications Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the Jisc consortium have announced a landmark transitional agreement that will serve researchers in the UK across all fields of chemistry. The three-year agreement, which will last through 2024, provides the ability for all scientific articles published by researchers at UK universities and research institutes in ACS journals to be open access (OA) at no cost to the researcher.

GOBI® Library Solutions from EBSCO (GOBI Library Solutions) now supports the Knowledge Unlatched (KU) Open Access (OA) e-books funding model, providing the opportunity for academic libraries to support OA funding initiatives within their GOBI workflow. The addition of the Knowledge Unlatched Open Research Library E-Book platform will make the complete collection of Knowledge Unlatched OA crowdfunding products available to GOBI customers worldwide.

Jisc and the Royal Society of Chemistry have extended and revised their transformative agreement until the end of 2024. Now utilising all previous expenditure to support open access (OA) publications, the deal covers all expected publishing output in the Royal Society of Chemistry’s hybrid journals portfolio.

Thieme and the Dutch Library Consortium UKB have concluded a Read-and-Publish agreement, with the Dutch cooperative association for educational and research institutions SURF serving as intermediary party. The agreement includes eleven leading Dutch universities and provides members of the participating institutions with unlimited read access to a total of 55 Thieme journals. In addition, associated scientists and authors may submit an unlimited number of Open Access scientific articles with no additional article processing charge (APC) and under a CC-BY license.

PeerJ, the award-winning Open Access publisher, is delighted to announce that Western University, Canada, has joined their Three-Year Fixed Term Memberships Program. Western becomes the fifth institution to sign up to the program, which offers an innovative alternative to Article Processing Charges for Open Access. Under the agreement, the cost of Three-Year Memberships for Western University-affiliated authors are waived, meaning no out-of-pocket fees for faculty members to publish in PeerJ’s seven journals. 

Springer Nature and Clarivate share a commitment to building an inclusive research culture and championing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the communities they serve, supporting Sustainable Development Goal 10 aimed at reducing inequalities.

The Company of Biologists is delighted to announce a partnership with the OA Switchboard which makes it much easier for our library customers to manage their Read & Publish agreements and to monitor the success of their Open Access (OA) strategy.