Nine more institutions to join The Company of Biologists’ Read & Publish Open Access agreement with the Council of Australian University Librarians in 2023

14 December 2022

The Company of Biologists’ 2022-2024 Read & Publish Open Access agreement with the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) continues to be a great success, and we are delighted to announce that the number of institutions participating in 2023 will increase from 11 to 20.

All institutions that participated in the agreement in 2022 have chosen to renew, and a further nine institutions will be joining in 2023. Three institutions have also upgraded their Read & Publish package to include all our journals – Development, Journal of Cell Science, Journal of Experimental Biology, Disease Models & Mechanisms and Biology Open – bringing the total number of institutions with our five-journal package to 15.

Mike Wall, University Librarian at the University of Otago and CAUL Content Procurement Committee member, says:

“It is pleasing to see more institutions taking up Read & Publish agreements in 2023, such as this one with The Company of Biologists. Uncapped agreements like this provide certainty to Australian and New Zealand researchers that their research will be published immediately Open Access and made available to the world.”

Rich Blount, Regional Sales Manager, Europe and Australasia at The Company of Biologists, says:

“It is great news that researchers at 20 institutions in Australia and New Zealand will benefit from uncapped, immediate and fee-free Open Access publishing in our journals in 2023 through our Read & Publish agreement with CAUL. Not only have all existing participants renewed, we are very pleased that nine more institutions are joining and that 14 institutions have opted to include all five of our leading peer-reviewed biological science journals in their Read & Publish package.”

“We are thrilled with the response from the library and research communities in Australia and New Zealand to our Read & Publish Open Access agreement with CAUL. There has already been a year-on-year increase in the number of OA articles published by authors at participating institutions in 2022 – the first year of the agreement – and we look forward to continuing to work with CAUL and member institutions to further accelerate OA publishing in the biological and biomedical sciences in 2023 and beyond.”

About the Council of Australian University Librarians 

The Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) is the peak leadership organisation for university libraries in Australia and New Zealand. CAUL members are the University Librarians or equivalent of the 39 institutions that have representation on Universities Australia (UA) and the 8 University Librarians or equivalent of the institutions that have representation on Universities New Zealand (UNZ) and who form the Council of New Zealand University Librarians (CONZUL), a committee of UNZ. CAUL makes a significant contribution to higher education strategy, policy and outcomes through a commitment to a shared purpose: To transform how people experience knowledge – how it can be discovered, used and shared. CAUL’s vision is that society is transformed through the power of research, teaching and learning. University libraries are essential knowledge and information infrastructures that enable student achievement and research excellence.

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

We have been committed to Open Access (OA) for over 17 years. We publish two fully OA journals – Disease Models & Mechanisms and Biology Open. Our hybrid journals were the first in the world to be afforded Transformative Journal status by Plan S and over 500 institutions in 39 countries are now participating in our cost-neutral Read & Publish OA initiative. We also have Read & Publish agreements with nine library consortia and an international library organisation.