New Read & Publish Open Access agreement between The Company of Biologists and the Max Planck Digital Library

The Company of Biologists is delighted to announce a three-year Read & Publish Open Access agreement with the Max Planck Digital Library.

Under the new cost-neutral transformative agreement - which runs from 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2023 - corresponding authors at Max Planck Society’s 86 Institutes benefit from immediate Open Access publication of their research articles in The Company of Biologists’ hybrid subscription journals - Development, Journal of Cell Science and Journal of Experimental Biology - with no author-facing publishing charges.

In addition, this landmark agreement enables corresponding authors at Max Planck Institutes to publish research articles without charge in The Company of Biologists’ fully Open Access journals - Disease Models & Mechanisms and Biology Open.

Unlimited access to the full journal archives dating back to 1853 is also available.

“We are very pleased to implement this new agreement with The Company of Biologists, and salute their willingness to test new economic models that are repurposing previous subscription fees to facilitate a sustainable and cost-neutral transition of their journals to an Open Access publishing model,” says Ralf Schimmer, Head of Information Provision at the Max Planck Digital Library. "This agreement marks a further, significant step in the Max Planck Society’s strategy to enable open dissemination of research, in line with the principles of the OA2020 Initiative and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access.”

“As a not-for-profit publisher with a mission to support biologists and inspire biology, we have been committed to Open Access for many years. We have worked closely with our library partners and funding organisations to develop sustainable OA publishing models and we pride ourselves on our flexibility and willingness to experiment,” says Richard Grove, Commercial Manager at The Company of Biologists. “Following fruitful discussions with the Max Planck Society, we are pleased to pilot a Read & Publish agreement which has been tailored to meet the needs of a research-intensive institution with a large network of Institutes.”

Further information, and a full list of participating institutions, is available here.

About the Max Planck Society

The Max Planck Society is Germany's premier research organization. Since its establishment in 1948, no fewer than 20 Nobel laureates have emerged from the ranks of its scientists, placing it on a par with the best and most prestigious research institutions worldwide. The more than 15,000 publications each year in internationally renowned scientific journals are testimony of the outstanding research work conducted at Max Planck Institutes.

The Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL) is a central scientific service unit within the Max Planck Society dedicated to the strategic planning, development and operation of the digital infrastructures necessary for providing its institutes and their scholars and scientists with research information, support for web-based scholarly communication, research tools and research data management and software licensing.

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 subscription journals: Development, Journal of Cell Science and Journal of Experimental Biology.

We have been committed to Open Access (OA) for over 16 years. We were one of the first not-for-profit publishers to launch a cost-neutral Read & Publish OA initiative for our hybrid subscription journals and over
150 institutions and four library consortia in 14 countries are now participating. We also publish
two fully OA journals - Disease Models & Mechanisms and Biology Open.

Contact: Richard Grove

Tel:Commercial Manager

Email:subscriptions@biologists.com

Website:https://www.biologists.com/read-publish

Twitter:@Co_Biologists