Read & Publish Open Access Agreement between The Company of Biologists and MALMAD renewed for a further three years 

6 January 2026

The Company of Biologists is delighted to announce the renewal of its five-journal Read & Publish agreement with MALMAD. Following the success of our previous collaborations, we’ve entered into a new agreement that will be in effect from 1 January 2026 through 31 December 2028. 

Researchers at eight leading institutions in Israel can continue to 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). Authors at participating institutions also benefit from unlimited access to our transformative journals, including their full archives dating back to 1853. 

Sigal Lahav Scher, Director of MALMAD, says: 

“We are pleased to renew our Read & Publish agreement with The Company of Biologists, covering costs for Israeli researchers at participating institutions to publish an unlimited number of Open Access articles in all five of The Company of Biologists’ journals, whilst also giving them read access. Our continued cooperation is an important step in the transition to Open Access.”   

Rich Blount, International Sales Manager, The Company of Biologists, says:

“We are very happy to extend our partnership with the MALMAD consortium through this new three-year Read & Publish agreement. This collaboration underscores our shared commitment to advancing open access and supporting researchers in Israel with greater opportunities to publish and access high-quality scholarly content. Together, we are driving progress toward a more open and inclusive research ecosystem.” 

The following institutions are participating in the 2026-2028 Read & Publish agreement: 

• Bar-Ilan University 

• Ben Gurion University 

• Hebrew University of Jerusalem 

• Israel Institute of Technology 

• Technion in Haifa 

• Tel Aviv University 

• University of Haifa 

• Weizmann Institute of Science 

About MALMAD 

MALMAD, the Inter-University Center for Digital Information Services, acts as a consortium for the acquisition, licensing, and management of digital information services to Israel’s universities and colleges. This inter-university cooperation and pooling of resources ensures that modern digital information services are provided more efficiently and at a lower cost-per-user. 

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 56 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.