Massive transformative OA deal for Springer

Springer Nature has signed a memorandum of understanding for what it describes as ‘the world’s largest transformative open access agreement’. The agreement, when concluded, will see the 700+ academic and research institutions comprising Germany’s Projekt DEAL gain read-and-publish access to more than 2,500 Springer journals – 600 fully open access, 1900 hybrid– and is expected to lead to the open access publication of more than 13,000 articles by German scholars and scientists each year. The contract will run from 2020 to 2022, with an option to extend for a further year.

Springer Nature has also announced the ten recipients of its China New Development Awards, recognising books written by China-based researchers and published by the Springer Nature imprints Springer and Palgrave Macmillan, that have made exceptional contributions to the delivery of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The complete list of ten titles is available on the Springer website.

Cambridge signs deal in Saudi Arabia

Cambridge University Press has signed another transformative Open Access agreement, this time with the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia. The three-year deal, which will give scholars at KAUST read-and-publish access to a comprehensive package of science and technology journals published by Cambridge, follows similar agreements with the University of California, the Max Planck Society and the Bavarian State Library, JISC; the Bibsam consortium of Swedish higher education and research institutions, and the UKB consortium of Dutch university libraries.

Wiley partners with ASM

Wiley has announced a partnership with the American Society of Microbiology (ASM) which will see it become the official co-publisher and distributor of the reference works, textbooks, and non-journal publications produced by the ASM Press. The two partners will also collaborate with Atypon on an online resource for clinical microbiologists, clinicians, researchers, and students.

Emerald partners with Web of Science on transparent peer review pilot

Emerald Publishing is partnering with Clarivate Analytics company the Web of Science group to pilot a cross-publisher, scalable and transparent peer review workflow from Publons and ScholarOne across three of its journals: Online Information Review, Industrial Lubrication and Tribology, and the International Journal of Social Economics. Readers will be able to access a comprehensive peer review history for each article, including reviewer reports, editor decision letters and authors’ responses; each element will be assigned its own DOI.

News in brief

Oxford University Press has acquired the journal Toxicology Research from the Royal Society of Chemistry. The latter has also announced a new partnership with the American Chemical Society, the German Chemical Society (Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker), the Chinese Chemical Society, and the Chemical Society of Japan to support the strategic and financial development of ChemRxiv, a preprint server for the global chemistry community.

HighWire is partnering with SendGrid and AdButler to offer publishers an enhanced customised email alert service with integrated user analytics.

Non-profit publisher BioOne is working with Charlesworth Author Services to offer language editing services to its publishing partners.

---