New request to publishers from cOAlition S
cOAlition S has sent a letter to publishers requesting increased transparency on their policies and contracts at the start of the submission process. The letter asks publishers to ensure that authors are aware, from the beginning of the submission process, of the licence they will be required to sign, any fees they will have to pay, and whether their manuscript will be rerouted to another journal. This information should be displayed prominently on the publisher website, in any ‘information for authors’ documentation, and in the submission system at the start of the submission process. cOAlition S has also prepared a form for publishers to complete in response.
Springer extends use of In Review
Springer Nature has extended its use of Research Square’s In Review service to more than 500 of its journals. The service integrates early sharing and increased transparency in peer review with the journal submission and peer review process. Authors submitting to these journals will have the option of opting into or out of the service; opting in will enable them to cite and share their work while it is still under review and gain real-time updates on the peer review process.
Transformative agreements
The past month has seen an absolute flurry of new and extended transformative and open access agreements between publishers and academic institutions.
The Public Library of Science (PLOS) has signed two new deals with European consortia. A three-year deal with the Consortium of Swiss Academic Libraries (CSAL), and a two-year agreement with Sweden’s Bibsam Consortium, will enable researchers from affiliated institutions to publish an unlimited number of open access articles in PLOS journals without incurring article processing charges.
Springer Nature has also signed a deal with the Bibsam Consortium that extends a previous 2019 agreement between the two parties. Researchers at ten affiliated institutions will be able to publish OA articles in Nature and the Nature Research Journals at no cost to themselves, as well as in Springer Nature’s fully OA journals, more than 2,000 hybrid journals, and Palgrave and Academic journals; participating institutions will also have access to extended subscribed content. A second agreement, with Italy’s National Research Council (CNR), will give researchers in the council’s 88 research institutes the option of publishing in more than 2,300 Springer, Adis, and Palgrave hybrid journals, alongside access to all subscription journal content.
SAGE has signed a three-year read-and-publish deal with the South African National Library and Information Consortium (SANLiC) that will provide researchers at affiliated institutions in South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia with no-cost publishing rights in hybrid journals that form part of the publisher’s Premier collection, and a discount on article processing charges when publishing in any of SAGE’s 150 gold OA titles.
Wiley has agreed several new and extended deals. A one-year pilot deal with the University of California will see authors at all UC campuses receive a discount on OA publication with Wiley, with libraries at five UC campuses additionally covering the first $1,000 of any APC for OA publication in a Wiley journal. A two-year agreement with OhioLINK, an Ohio library consortium, will complement researchers’ existing read access to all Wiley journals with the option of publishing articles OA in more than 1400 Wiley hybrid journals. And a one-year extension to an existing contract with the Big Ten Academic Alliance will enable researchers at participating universities to publish OA articles in all Wiley’s hybrid OA journals; read access to all Wiley’s subscription content is also included in the deal.
IOP Publishing has signed three-year agreements with the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) and The Central Technical Library (CTK) at the University of Ljubljana. Researchers at 45 CRKN organisations will have unlimited publishing rights in IOPP’s hybrid and fully OA journals, plus read access to all IOPP’s fully owned and partner journals; members of the users of the University of Ljubljana will have unlimited read access to more than 90 IOPP journals and the ability to publish in most of IOPP’s hybrid journals.
Frontiers has concluded two new open access deals. An agreement with the Julius Kühn Institute in Germany will allow researchers at 17 institutions to publish in Fronters’ journals at no cost to themselves. And a three-year deal with the Italian National Research Council, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) will provide researchers at 39 institutes with a 10% discount on APCs, which will be paid on their behalf by those institutes.
The Microbiology Society has concluded a new deal with the Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMCAS), providing researchers at affiliated institutions with full read access to the society’s six journals and the ability to publish an unlimited number of OA articles in its hybrid and fully OA titles.
In brief
Emerald Publishing will be flipping the Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management to a fully OA and APC-free model from 2023, following the agreement of a four-year sponsorship deal with the Kühne Foundation.
The AXA Research Fund is launching its own publishing hub, to be hosted on Taylor & Francis’s F1000Research platform. The hub will enable all AXA-funded research outputs to be published, incorporating invited and open post-publication peer review, article versioning, archiving, and indexing.
Alastair Horne is a PhD student at the British Library and Bath Spa University.