Read & Publish Open Access initiative

The Company of Biologists has been committed to Open Access since 2004 because we believe that immediate and free availability of high-quality research helps us to achieve our mission of advancing excellence in the biological and biomedical sciences worldwide.

We were one of the first not-for-profit journal publishers to launch a cost-neutral Read & Publish initiative, and over 200 institutions in 17 countries and six library consortia are now participating.

View our Read & Publish flier | View our Read & Publish slide deck

What are Read & Publish agreements?

Available to libraries and library consortia for a single annual fee, our standard Read & Publish agreements offer unlimited “read” access to our three subscription journals – Development, Journal of Cell Science and Journal of Experimental Biology – plus uncapped fee-free Gold Open Access publishing of research articles.

Read
Unlimited access to all current and available archive content dating back to 1853

Publish
Free and uncapped publication of Gold Open Access research articles

What are the benefits of Read & Publish agreements?

Our standard Read & Publish agreements offer many benefits to libraries and researchers. :

unlimited access to our three subscription journals – Development, Journal of Cell Science and Journal of Experimental Biology – including the full archive dating back to 1853
free and uncapped publishing of Gold Open Access research articles for all corresponding authors under CC-BY licence terms, with authors retaining copyright
supports institutions and authors working to meet funding requirements and to make Open Access the default publishing choice
transparent, cost-neutral pricing plus ease of administration with no separate article processing charges (APCs)

We are also piloting variations of our standard Read & Publish model with the Max Planck Digital Library and the University of California.

Read & Publish for libraries

Read & Publish agreements are available to libraries worldwide.

Pricing is transparent and cost-neutral. It is calculated on the basis of current subscription spend plus the annual average APC spend (if any) over the last three years.

Our standard Read & Publish agreements offer unlimited access to all our subscription journals – Development, Journal of Cell Science and Journal of Experimental Biology – even if your library does not currently subscribe to them all. Corresponding authors can also publish an uncapped number of Open Access research articles in our three subscription journals at no cost to them.

See more information for librarians .

Read & Publish for library consortia

Read & Publish agreements are available to library consortia worldwide.

We have signed Read & Publish agreements with three national library consortia – IReL (Ireland), Jisc (UK) and MALMAD (Israel) – and with Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL).

In addition we are piloting variations of our standard Read & Publish model with the Max Planck Digital Library and the University of California. These agreements also include our fully Open Access journals – Disease Models & Mechanisms and Biology Open.

Matthew Freeman, Chairman of The Company of Biologists and Head of the Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford, said:

We are thrilled to have signed transformative Read & Publish Open Access agreements with IReL, Jisc, MALMAD, the Max Planck Digital Library and, most recently, the University of California. As a small not-for-profit publisher, this important initiative strengthens our support for the biological community and represents an important step in our Open Access journey.

Find out more about our agreements with library consortia.