The Company of Biologists connects to the OA Switchboard

20 April 2022

The Company of Biologists is delighted to announce a partnership with the OA Switchboard which makes it much easier for our library customers to manage their Read & Publish agreements and to monitor the success of their Open Access (OA) strategy.

Thanks to the great success of our cost-neutral Read & Publish OA initiative, there has been a significant increase in the number of research articles published immediately OA in our hybrid subscription journals – Development, Journal of Cell Science and Journal of Experimental Biology. This is excellent news, but the lack of standardisation between systems, portals and processes has created challenges, particularly in terms of reporting and data analysis.

The OA Switchboard offers a solution. A not-for-profit, independent and industry-wide initiative, the OA Switchboard provides a central multi-publisher hub for the exchange of OA-related publication-level information. It offers standardised and authoritative data for internal and external reporting and purchasing decisions. It also feeds data automatically into existing funder, institution and library systems for further integration, processing and analysis.

Connectors between The Company of Biologists and the OA Switchboard are now in place. This means that we can provide real-time publishing information on a regular basis to our library customers that are signed up to the OA Switchboard, and reporting is available from 1 January 2022.

Yvonne Campfens, Executive Director of Stichting OA Switchboard, says: 

“The OA Switchboard shapes collaborative infrastructure to make the ecosystem work better for everyone. The more stakeholders connect, the better the service for everyone. We are delighted to have The Company of Biologists, with their OA ambitions, participate in the initiative.”