We are a not-for-profit publisher with a mission to support biologists and inspire biology. We have been committed to Open Access since 2004, as we believe immediate and free access to the latest research is important for the advancement of science.

Read & Publish agreements support researchers and institutions in complying with funder mandates. They also reduce the barriers to reading, publishing and sharing articles.

In November 2019, we were one of the first not-for-profit publishers to launch a cost-neutral Read & Publish initiative and our journals were the first in the world to be awarded Transformative Journal status by Plan S.

There has been a great response to our Read & Publish initiative from libraries and library consortia and you can see which institutions are participating.

Read our Open Access story.

As is the case with traditional subscription agreements, Read & Publish agreements are typically negotiated and signed by institutional libraries.

However, whereas subscription agreements cover access to content, Read & Publish agreements (the terms of which can vary between publishers) also cover Open Access publishing.

The Company of Biologists’ Read & Publish agreements are cost neutral, and offer generous terms:

• researchers at participating institutions get unlimited access to our three hybrid journals – Development, Journal of Cell Science and Journal of Experimental Biology – and their archives dating back to 1853
• corresponding authors at participating institutions also benefit from uncapped Open Access publication of research articles in our hybrid journals and our fully Open Access journals – Disease Models & Mechanisms and Biology Open

The principle of “cost-neutrality” to describe Read & Publish agreements was agreed between libraries and publishers in the SPA OPS (Society Publishers Accelerating Open-Access and Plan S) project which was funded by the Wellcome Trust, UKRI and ALPSP. See the final project report.

The pricing for our Read & Publish agreements conforms to this principle as it is based on an institution’s subscription spend on one, two or three of our hybrid journals (the “Read” fee), plus the average annual Article Processing Charge (APC) paid (if any) over the prior 3 years (the “Publish” fee).

If an institution does not currently subscribe to any of our journals, a flat-fee Read & Publish price applies.

For library consortia, we apply the above pricing structure as standard, i.e. the member institutions’ previous year’s subscription spend (“Read” fee), plus the average annual Article Processing Charge (APC) spend over the prior three years (“Publish” fee). The total consortium price will depend on the number of institutions within the consortium wishing to participate in the agreement.

We have an ongoing commitment to fair and transparent pricing – find out more.

Read & Publish agreements are very cost effective:

Pricing is transparent and cost-neutral, i.e. based on the average price an institution has paid for subscriptions (to one or more of our hybrid journals) and Open Access publishing (if any) over the prior three years. For this sum:

• corresponding authors can publish an unlimited number of research articles immediately Open Access in our three hybrid journals – Development, Journal of Cell Science and Journal of Experimental Biology plus our fully Open Access journals Disease Models & Mechanisms and Biology Open
• researchers get unlimited access to all three hybrid journals and their archives dating back to 1853 (even if the institution had previously subscribed to one or two)
• multi-year agreements are available

Read & Publish agreements are easy to set up and administer:

• there is a single annual fee covering “read” and “publish” with no separate article processing charges (APCs) to manage
• reports of Open Access articles published under each agreement are available via logging into RightsLink, or on request by emailing subscriptions@biologists.com
• the RightsLink solution from CCC (Copyright Clearance Center) is used to manage our Read & Publish workflows, including the automatic identification of corresponding author articles which are deposited automatically in PubMed Central

Other benefits include:

• easy compliance with funders’ Open Access mandates
• straightforward submission process (see our guide for authors)
• articles are published under CC BY licence terms, with authors retaining copyright
• articles published immediately Open Access have higher visibility

Read more about how Read & Publish agreements benefit libraries and researchers.

Read what authors, librarians and library consortia say about Read & Publish agreements.

Yes, multi-year agreements are available.

You can download flyers and a slide deck by clicking the links below.

• Read & Publish flyer
• Read & Publish slide deck
• Journal flyers: All journals| Development | Journal of Cell Science | Journal of Experimental Biology | Disease Models & Mechanisms | Biology Open

A list of participating libraries is available.

Yes, we have negotiated Read & Publish agreements with library consortia in many parts of the world. We are also piloting variations of our Read & Publish agreements with the Max Planck Digital Library and University of California.

You can find out more about our agreements with library consortia.

A Read & Publish institutional agreement is available.

Yes, an expanding range of resources – including social media graphics, posters and website banners – are available in our librarian toolkit. If you would like customised versions including your institutional or library logo, please contact subscriptions@biologists.com.

The Open Access landscape is changing fast, and it is hard to predict what the future will bring. We believe that Open Access benefits science and we have demonstrated our commitment to the OA movement since 2004.

We believe that our Read & Publish initiative has the potential to be a long-term, transformative solution that will work for the research community internationally as well as for us as a not-for-profit publisher.

Whatever happens, maintaining our excellent relationship with our library customers will always be central to our strategy.

We will continue to be transparent regarding our pricing policies and our progress towards our public commitment to meeting OA targets as the publisher of the world’s first Transformative Journals.

We will keep customers regularly updated via email and the Library Hub section of our website, and you can learn more about our ongoing commitment to fair and transparent pricing.

Yes, in most cases you may continue to use your subscription agent for all billing and invoicing. Please contact us for details.

Please see our Read & Publish guide for authors.

The corresponding author (CA) has an important role, taking primary responsibility for communication with the journal (through submission, peer review, revisions, proofs, etc), ensuring that all co-authors agree to the contents of the manuscript (and any revisions) and that all matters comply with the policies of the journal, as well as signing the Publication Agreement and arranging payment of an article processing charge, where required.

The CA should also be available for any post-publication queries (correspondence from other members of the community, requests for materials and data, ethics queries etc). In addition, the role of CA is often seen to confer a level of seniority and experience.

The CA should ensure that all co-authors have agreed authorship and contributorship (using the CRediT taxonomy) before submission. The choice of CA on a manuscript should be based on the above commitments rather than any financial considerations.

The CA’s contact details (email, institute, country etc), are provided by the authors during submission, and this metadata is transferred to CCC (Copyright Clearance Center, our post-publication licencing partner) if an article is accepted for publication.

Important note for Open Access publication: CAs should check their funder mandates carefully to ensure they select the appropriate OA publishing route. If a CC-BY license is required, please select Gold OA.

Yes, we are participating in the OA Switchboard and we can provide real-time publishing information on a regular basis to libraries that have signed up. Find out more. View the OA Switchboard poster.

Yes, we provide full-text Open Access (OA) articles for distribution to UK institutional repositories via Jisc’s Publications Router service. This means that the version of record is delivered automatically to authors’ institutions, usually within seven weeks of acceptance, together with rich and authoritative metadata.

The Jisc Publications Router Service is available free of charge to Jisc-member higher education institutions with compatible systems. Find out more.

Yes. All articles published through Read & Publish agreements will automatically be deposited in PubMed Central.
In addition, we deposit in US NLM PMC for funders that mandate this repository (for release after 6 or 12 months as mandated). For funders that require deposit in Europe PMC or other publicly available repositories, we allow self-archiving of the final published PDF for release 12 months after publication or as otherwise mandated.

Please contact our Regional Sales Managers.

We publish three specialist peer-reviewed journals which have provided access to the latest, high-quality biological science research since 1853:

• Development
• Journal of Cell Science
• Journal of Experimental Biology

We also publish two fully Open Access journals:

• Disease Models & Mechanisms
• Biology Open

We are committed to ensuring our environmental impact is kept to a minimum and we are working hard to make sustainability a consideration in everything we do so have concluded that following the despatch of the final issues of our journals in 2024, there will be no further print versions of Development (ISSN 0950-1991), Journal of Cell Science (ISSN 0021-9533) and Journal of Experimental Biology (ISSN 0022-0949).

Online-only subscriptions are available for our hybrid journals: Development, Journal of Cell Science and Journal of Experimental Biology.

Subscriptions are available on a calendar year (January to December).

Subscriptions are subject to the completion of a licence and, by paying for subscriptions, subscribers are also agreeing to our Copyright Policy and Terms and Conditions.

Read & Publish Open Access agreements are also available to libraries and library consortia worldwide.

We have a 5-tier pricing model for institutional subscriptions.

2025 pricing for tiers 1-4 is available.

Pricing for Tier 5 institutions and library consortia is negotiated on a case-by-case basis.

To request a quote and/or subscribe, please contact us and provide the following information:

• journal name
• full name and address of organisation
• number of site locations
• FTE
• tier coding (if known)

You can view the sample licence agreement (covering both single-site and multi-site).

Yes, we accept orders and payments for new subscriptions and renewals via subscription agents.

Please contact us to request a back issue quotation or make a claim for missing print issues.

Claims should be made immediately after receipt of a subsequent issue or within three months of the journal despatch date.

Claims for damage should be reported within three days of receipt of the journal issue. Please provide the following information when making a claim:

• your subscriber number
• your full name and address
• the journal name
• relevant volume number
• issue number

No, we no longer offer personal subscriptions.

Single site

A single site is a single contiguous geographic region from within which the library’s “Authorized Users” and public visitors can access the Licensed Materials over a secure network.

A typical single site would have a single billing address for all subscription purchases and all physical locations accessing the Licensed Materials would be located on the same physical campus.

If the library maintains or provides service to users that are outside of one single geographical contiguous location, or multiple departments that operate independently of the parent institution, then the library may need to obtain a multi-site or consortium license.

Multi-site

A multi-site is defined as:

A non-contiguous site, i.e. a single institution with separate branches or departments that operate independently and may or may not share IP addresses and/or network services with another site.

Affiliates, partners or franchises that may or may not operate independently of another institution and may or may not be located on the same site and may or may not share IP addresses and/or network services with another site.

If your institution has a subscription, and you are accessing our journals via your institutional network, you will automatically have access to the tables of contents, abstracts, full text searching, full text display, PDFs, Medline and GenBank links, and tables of contents in progress.

You may also see your institution’s name or logo on webpages.

If this happens, the IP address for your machine is not being recognised by our server. This could be because:

• your institutional subscription has expired or has not yet been activated
• all valid IP addresses may not have been registered in your institution’s account
• some subnets of your institution may be routed through a proxy server that has not been authorised by The Company of Biologists
• cookies may need to be cleared

In the first instance talk to your librarian and let them know you are having difficulties or contact our subscriptions team at subscriptions@biologists.com

If you do not have access through an institutional subscription, you can search the full text of our journals and access table of contents, abstracts and the full text of articles published more than 12 months previously. You can also purchase access to individual new articles.

Our five journals have been hosted on the Silverchair publishing platform since April 2021.

Silverchair is committed to the creation of software that meets modern accessibility expectations. See our accessibility statement for further details.

Yes, for further details please contact subscriptions@biologists.com.

The linking syntax is as follows:

Article by DOI:
URL format: https://journals.biologists.com/[site abbreviation]/article-lookup/DOI/[ ]
Example: https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article-lookup/DOI/10.1242/jeb.234070

Article by volume/issue/page or content ID:
URL format: https://journals.biologists.com/[site abbreviation]/article-lookup article-lookup/[volume]/[issue]/[page or CID]
Example: https://journals.biologists.com/jcs/article-lookup/133/24/jcs245571

Yes, all our journal websites utilise responsive design, allowing the screen to automatically resize to fit the reader’s chosen device, so they can easily read an article on their desktop, tablet or mobile.

The full range of COUNTER5 usage reports can be downloaded by library administrators who are logged into the Silverchair admin dashboard.

Please contact us if you have any questions or need any help.

On the Silverchair admin dashboard, library administrators can:

• update institution details (name, address, phone number)
• upload institutional logos
• update admin contact details (name, username, password)
• manage Shibboleth and OpenURL link resolver information
• download IP addresses

Yes, the Silverchair user guide can be downloaded from the bottom right of the admin dashboard.

We have also put together a brief “how-to” guide for library administrators.

To save library administrators time and effort in having to check and update IP addresses in multiple publisher systems, we have partnered with theIPregistry.org.

A free service for libraries, theIPregistry.org provides librarians with a central place to check and update IP address data, and changes can be communicated to participating publishers (including The Company of Biologists) simultaneously with a single click.

Library administrators can view the IP address date we hold for their institution in the Silverchair admin dashboard. They have been cross-checked against theIPregistry.org’s repository of validated IP addresses covering over 70,000 organisations worldwide.

IP address data is updated on a daily basis from information supplied by theIPregistry.org, thereby ensuring that changes are quick and accurate.

• log into theIPregistry.org or register free of charge
• find out more about how to submit updates via theIPregistry.org

If your institution does not wish to register with theIPregistry.org,
please contact us with a complete list of IP addresses to be registered and annotate any proxy IPs.

Please quote your subscriber number and list each IP address, or partial IP address, following these rules:

• the only characters allowed are numbers, dashes (-), or asterisks (*)
• there should be 4 segments (containing max 3 characters) and no segment of an IP address can be blank
• the allowed values for the first segment are 1-223
• the allowed values for segments 2, 3, 4 are 0-254
• the first segment cannot contain a range (-)
• the first and second segments cannot contain a wildcard (*)
• the third and fourth segments cannot both contain a range (-)

Example using both the wildcard character (*) and the range character (-):

Main site: All addresses beginning with 10.175.4 – use asterisk, in this case 10.175.4.*

Department: All addresses between 192.168.55.* and 192.168.60.* – use asterisk, in this case 192.168.55-60.*

Department: All addresses between 192.168.62.77 and 192.168.62.145 – use dashes, in this case 192.168.62.77-145

KBART files for our hybrid and Open Access journals can be downloaded.

Logged in users can also download files from the Silverchair admin dashboard by selecting the “KBART” tab.

Yes, our journals can be cross-searched at https://journals.biologists.com/advanced-search.

We are part of eduGAIN which allows us to authenticate customers from around 60 Shibboleth federations. We currently offer Shibboleth access via the following federations:

• AAF (Australia)
• ACOnet Identify Federation (Austria)
• Belnet Federation (Belgium)
• Canadian Access Federation (Canada)
• COFRe (Chile)
• DFN-AAI (Germany)
• Edugate (Ireland)
• Federation Education-Recherche (France)
• GakuNin (Japan)
• IDEM (Italy)
• InCommon (United States)
• INFED (India)
• SIR (Spain)
• SWAMID (Sweden)
• SWITCHaai (Switzerland)
• UK federation (United Kingdom)

Please contact us to request access via additional federations.

We do not currently support OpenAthens access directly, however we do allow Proxy services, so if an institution has an OpenAthens proxy IP, access can be granted in this way, provided two-factor authentication has been deployed.

Yes, if your institution has deployed two factor authentication – specifically that each Authorised User is able to access the Licensed Materials by inputting either:

• a username and a password
• a staff ID and a PIN or
• an email address and a software token

Proxy servers that only require a staff ID to log in (without password) are not permitted for authenticating users.

Authorised users may digitally transfer or print journal articles to fulfil interlibrary loan (ILL) requests for academic, research or other non-commercial libraries.

Fair Use and CONTU guidelines on the appropriate amount of ILL activity should be followed.

Authorised users may print and store individual articles for educational purposes and private study.

All copyright and other rights of The Company of Biologists in and to the Licensed Materials are reserved.

Yes, you will be entitled to perpetual access rights for the years of content corresponding to the period when you maintained a subscription.

The subscription fee allows for unrestricted access at one location unless a multi-site licence is in place.

Any user connecting from an authorised computer on your institutional network will be allowed access to the online journals. This includes members of the public accessing via terminals located onsite and under the control of the subscribing institution.

Authorised users may also use home computers and other mobile devices provided such use can be authenticated by the institution. Institutional proxy servers must be authorised under the Terms and Conditions of the Licence.

We fully support the LOCKSS programme, a multi-institutional, multi-publisher initiative to create a permanent web publishing and access system. Content preserved by libraries through LOCKSS becomes a part of their collection and they have perpetual access to 100% of titles preserved in their LOCKSS box.

We have also partnered with CLOCKSS, the community governed and supported digital preservation archive for scholarly content. This gives libraries the assurance that they will have a secure preservation solution and permanent access to our journals should a ‘trigger event’ ever occur.

We require payment with order or upon receipt of an invoice.

We recommend that payment is made electronically by BACS. Please advise your bank to quote your invoice and subscriber number, in addition to sending a remittance advice to subscriptions@biologists.com.

Please contact us for our bank details or see the information provided on our invoices.

Unless specified otherwise, prices are applicable in the following regions:

• Euros (€) – for all European countries (excluding the UK)
• US Dollars ($) – for North, Central, South America and Canada
• Sterling (£) – for UK and ROW not covered above

Please ensure you use the appropriate currency when ordering/renewing subscriptions.

If you would like to make payment of your subscription via credit or debit card, please contact us.

All orders are regarded as firm and subscription payments are not refundable after online access has been activated or the first issue has been despatched.

Online access is subject to the completion of a licence or addendum to a current licence.

We have participated in OA since 2004 because we believe OA publishing is good for science as it leads to wider dissemination, higher readership of articles, content reuse, and an acceleration in the sharing of quality research.

We support Open Access via three main routes:

• high quality Open Access publishing
• cost-neutral Read & Publish Open Access agreements with libraries and library consortia
• our commitment to the Transformative Journal approach

Read more

We are committed to ensuring that institutions do not pay twice for access to OA content included within hybrid journals via author publishing charges (APCs) and subscription fees.

See details of our commitment to transparent pricing.

Read about our commitment to Equity, diversity and inclusion.

See our Copyright and Permissions policy.

We use a number of metrics that together provide a rich view of the performance of our journals. In addition, Altmetric data and usage statistics are available for individual articles.

See below for links to metrics for each journal:

• Biology Open
• Disease Models & Mechanisms
• Development
• Journal of Cell Science
• Journal of Experimental Biology

See below for links to APC information for each journal:

• Biology Open
• Development
• Disease Models & Mechanisms
• Journal of Cell Science
• Journal of Experimental Biology

Following our landmark Read & Publish agreement with EIFL, researchers in over 30 developing and transition economy countries can publish Open Access research articles free of charge in our subscription journals – Development, Journal of Cell Science and Journal of Experimental Biology. Libraries in these countries can also register for free institution-wide access to the journals and their archives via IP address.

Our two fully Open Access journals also offer full APC waivers for corresponding authors based in low-income and lower-middle-income economies (as classified by the World Bank). See below for links to relevant information:

• Biology Open
• Disease Models & Mechanisms

In addition, online access to our subscription journals has been available free to researchers in many developing economy countries through the Research4Life initiative for many years.

If you do not have access to our journals through an institutional subscription, you can purchase short-term access to an article where a PDF link is available on the Journal’s website.

Individual print copies may also be ordered via document supply services such as the British Library Document Supply Centre.

Free trials are available to institutions. Please contact us for details.

The Forest of Biologists is a biodiversity initiative that we launched with support from the Woodland Trust. The aim of the initiative is to counteract nature loss, and safeguard some of the most critically endangered ecosystems for future generations. For every Research Article and Review article that is published in one of our journals, a native tree is planted in a forest in the UK. In addition to planting new trees, we are also funding the restoration and preservation of ancient woodland and dedicating these trees to our peer reviewers, who help us preserve the integrity of the scientific record. Visit the virtual forest.