The Biochemical Society and its publishing arm Portland Press are delighted to announce a three-year open access agreement with the University of California (UC).
This agreement will allow researchers from all ten UC campuses to publish unlimited open access articles across all Portland Press journals (five hybrid and two fully open access), as well as expanding full read access to all journal content to researchers across the entire UC system. The Biochemical Society and Portland Press piloted their first transformative agreements in 2020; UC signed its first transformative agreement in 2019. Both institutions look forward to their new partnership, which represents another step towards the sustainable transition to full open access publishing.
The agreement is cost-neutral and follows UC’s multi-payer model, which is based on the premise of making scholarly publishing open, sustainable, and equitable. Running from January 1, 2022 to December 31, 2024, the agreement provides unlimited open access publishing to all UC corresponding authors by default (at a reduced price), with UC libraries also covering the first $1000 of every article publishing charge (APC). Authors who have grant funding available that can be used for open access fees will be asked to contribute the remainder of the APC; for those who do not, the remainder will be covered by UC.
Under the agreement, any UC corresponding author who wants to publish open access with Portland Press will now be able to do so, regardless of whether they have funding available. Authors who prefer not to publish open access can opt out.
This agreement represents an innovative alternative to the traditional subscription model in scholarly publishing and supports the shared mission of like-minded publishers and institutions to accelerate the shift towards sustainable open access publishing on a global scale.
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