The Company of Biologists renews Read & Publish Open Access agreement with JULAC for a further three years
28 October 2025
The Company of Biologists is delighted to announce the renewal of our five journal Read & Publish Open Access agreement with JULAC.
The three-year agreement, which runs from 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2028, ensures that corresponding authors at participating institutions in Hong Kong can publish an uncapped number of research articles immediately Open Access (OA) in our transformative journals (Development, Journal of Cell Science and Journal of Experimental Biology) and our fully Open Access journals (Disease Models & Mechanisms and Biology Open) without paying an article processing charge (APC). Researchers at participating institutions also benefit from unlimited access to our transformative journals, including their full archives dating back to 1853.
Flora Ng, Chair, Consortiall (JULAC sub-committee on consortium purchase) and CIO/University Librarian, The University of Hong Kong, says:
“As made clear in JULAC’s Position Statement on Open Scholarship, JULAC is committed to enabling Open Access (OA) to research publications. This agreement with The Company of Biologists is an example of the tangible support that libraries can provide to their institution’s researchers in making their work OA.”
Rich Blount, International Sales Manager at The Company of Biologists, says:
“We are delighted to successfully negotiate a new agreement with JULAC, continuing our strong partnership. Running through to the end of 2028, our Read & Publish initiative will continue to support Hong Kong researchers at participating institutes to publish Open Access research articles across all our journals with no additional fees. This is hugely important to us as we are dedicated to supporting and inspiring the biological community.”
Find out more about the agreement and participating institutions
Joint University Librarians Advisory Committee was established in 1967 by the Heads of Universities Committee. It is a forum to discuss, coordinate, and collaborate on library
information resources and services among the libraries of the eight tertiary education
institutions funded by the University Grants Committee of the Hong Kong SAR Government.
About The Company of Biologists
The Company of Biologists is a not-for-profit publishing organisation dedicated to supporting and inspiring the biological community. We partner with libraries and library consortia to enable biologists worldwide to access our leading peer-reviewed transformative journals — Development, Journal of Cell Science and Journal of Experimental Biology — and our fully OA journals — Disease Models & Mechanisms and Biology Open. 2025 marks the 100-year anniversary of The Company of Biologists. We have celebrated this important milestone with a community conference and other activities throughout the year.
We also have a long-standing and ongoing commitment to OA. Our cost-neutral
Read & Publish initiative enables corresponding authors at participating institutions to publish an uncapped number of OA research articles in our transformative journals and our two fully OA journals — without paying an APC. We were the first not-for-profit publisher to commit to the transformative journal approach and we are working towards a greater percentage of OA content year on year. Over 1,000 institutions in 55 countries are now participating in our cost neutral Read & Publish OA initiative. We also have Read & Publish agreements with many library consortia.
Learn more about our bio-positive publishing initiative, The Forest of Biologists.
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