The Company of Biologists has announced that the number of institutions participating in its cost-neutral Read & Publish Open Access (OA) initiative has more than doubled since June 2021, increasing from 235 to 522.
The number of countries represented has also risen by more than 50% over the last year – from 24 to 39. New agreements have now been signed with library consortia in Australia, Spain, Sweden, and the United States and, following a successful two-year pilot, a three-year renewal agreement has been signed with Jisc in the UK.
The success of its Read & Publish initiative has contributed to significant growth in the proportion of OA research content in the company’s hybrid journals – Development, Journal of Cell Science and Journal of Experimental Biology.
The journals were the first in the world to be presented with the Transformative Journal status by Plan S and all three exceeded their targets for OA growth in 2021.
The company’s hybrid journals are on track to meet their Transformative Journal targets in 2022. Building on the success of the initiative, libraries can now also include fully Open Access journals – Disease Models & Mechanisms and Biology Open – in their Read & Publish agreements.
