Renewal of Read & Publish Open Access agreement between The Company of Biologists and IReL

10 January 2023

Following the success of our first three-year Read & Publish Open Access (OA) agreement with IReL, we are delighted to announce that we have signed a renewal agreement from 1 January 2023 – 31 December 2025.

All eleven institutions that were participating in the 2020-2022 agreement have chosen to renew and, for the first time, the new agreement includes uncapped and fee-free publishing in The Company of Biologists’ fully OA journals – Disease Models & Mechanisms and Biology Open.

Researchers at participating institutions can continue to publish research articles immediately OA without charge in The Company’s hybrid journals – Development, Journal of Cell Science and Journal of Experimental Biology. They also have unlimited access to the journals and their archives dating back to 1853.

Jack Hyland, interim IReL Director, says:

“The Company of Biologists was one of the first publishers IReL signed a Read & Publish agreement with. We have been impressed with how they have been a leading example of a small, not-for-profit publisher offering their Read & Publish to libraries and consortia globally, and how they have been active in sharing emerging best practice in OA publishing with the scholarly communications community”.

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

“As a small, not-for-profit publisher, we particularly welcome partnerships with library consortia, and our Read & Publish consortium agreement with IReL was one of the first we negotiated. Three years on, it is great that the renewal agreement has been expanded to include uncapped, fee-free Open Access publishing in all five of our journals. We are also very pleased that all eleven participants have chosen to renew.”

Claire Moulton, Publisher at The Company of Biologists, says:

“Thanks to the tremendous support we have received from the international library community, and from consortia such as IReL, our Read & Publish initiative has accelerated the transition of our hybrid journals towards Open Access.

We are also delighted that our new Read & Publish agreement with IReL enables researchers at participating institutions to benefit from fee-free publishing in our fully OA journals for the first time.

We look forward to continuing to work together over the next three years to promote the growth of OA publishing in the biological and biomedical sciences in Ireland.”

The following institutions are participating in the 2023-2025 Read & Publish agreement:

Dublin City University
Higher Education Authority
Maynooth University
Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
Science Foundation Ireland
Technological University Dublin
Trinity College Dublin
University College Cork
University College Dublin
University of Galway
University of Limerick

About IReL

IReL is an Irish e-resource licensing consortium, which has been providing online access to journals and databases for libraries in participating publicly funded Irish higher education institutions since 2004. IReL is based in Maynooth University.

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 19 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.