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 600 institutions in 40 countries are participating. We also have agreements with ten library consortia.
The initiative continues to go from strength to strength and we are delighted that the number of participating institutions increased by 45% between January 2022 and January 2023. Read the announcement.
The success of our Read & Publish initiative has also helped us to meet the 2021 and 2022 Open Access growth targets for our hybrid journals, which were the first in the world to be afforded Transformative Journal status by Plan S.
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 Open Access publishing of research articles.
Libraries can also choose to include our two fully Open Access journals – Disease Models & Mechanisms and Biology Open – in their Read & Publish agreement.
Read
Unlimited access to all current and available archive content dating back to 1853
Publish
Free and uncapped publication of Open Access research articles
What are the benefits of Read & Publish agreements?
Our standard Read & Publish agreements offer many benefits to libraries, library consortia and researchers and authors:
- 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 (even if your library does not currently subscribe to them all)
- uncapped fee-free publishing of Open Access research articles for all corresponding authors under CC BY licence terms, with authors retaining copyright in our subscription journals plus our Open Access journals – Disease Models & Mechanisms and Biology Open
- compliant with funder mandates including Plan S
- automatic recognition of corresponding authors and straightforward submission process
- transparent, cost-neutral pricing calculated on the basis of current subscription spend plus the annual average APC spend (if any) over the last three years
- single fee covers both reading and publishing and multi-year agreements are available
- switching from a subscription to a Read & Publish agreement is straightforward
We are also piloting variations of our standard Read & Publish model with the Max Planck Digital Library and the University of California.
Find out more
- Participating institutions and library consortia
- Information for libraries
- Information for library consortia
- Our commitment to price transparency
- Information for researchers and authors, including a step-by-step guide for corresponding authors
- Read & Publish and Open Access video collection
Any questions? Please contact us.
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