The Company of Biologists has announced that its Read & Publish Open Access (OA) initiative has experienced significant growth in 2023, with over 650 institutions from 41 countries participating. Since January, an additional 58 institutions have joined this cost-neutral initiative, demonstrating the growing support for open access publishing.
Two library consortia, the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISER) and the Joint University Librarians Advisory Committee (JULAC) Consortium in Hong Kong, have recently signed agreements, increasing the number of participating consortia to 12.
The Read & Publish initiative has been instrumental in driving the growth of OA research content in The Company of Biologists' hybrid journals: Development, Journal of Cell Science, and Journal of Experimental Biology. These journals were the first to be granted Transformative Journal status by Plan S. In both 2021 and 2022, all three Transformative Journals successfully met their targets for OA growth. The Read & Publish agreements accounted for 71% of the total number of Open Access articles published in the hybrid journals in 2022.
Furthermore, nearly half of the participating libraries have chosen to include The Company of Biologists' fully Open Access journals, Disease Models & Mechanisms and Biology Open, in their Read & Publish agreements for 2023.
Click here to read the original press release.
