Frontiers: UK universities reach new national open access deal

Researchers from 180 UK universities can now benefit from a national open access deal agreed between Jisc Collections, which undertakes negotiations and licensing for digital content agreements on behalf of its members, and Frontiers, the 2nd largest fully open access publisher in the UK.

This landmark deal provides a simplified and streamlined route to open access publishing for researchers in the UK, who publish 7% of the world’s research.

Fully aligned to open access mandates such as Plan S, the new framework agreement equips 180 UK research institutions in steering scholarly communication towards a new era where open access becomes easier. The deal includes a national discount on article processing charges (APCs), centralized, flexible invoicing, payment options, and dedicated support for library staff dealing with APCs.

Liam Earney, executive director for digital resources of Jisc Collections, said: “We are delighted to have reached this agreement with a pure gold publisher. This is another significant step forward in reaching the goal of full and immediate open access, helping UK institutions and researchers to make open access publishing in Frontiers journals as frictionless and as cost effective as possible.”  

Kamila Markram, co-founder and CEO of Frontiers, said: “This national deal shows the strong commitment from the UK to make publicly funded research openly available. This is our third national deal in Europe, following Austria and Sweden, and we hope other countries will follow in this visionary transition to Open Science.”

The agreement is effective from 1 December 2019 until November 2022. As part of the agreement, researchers affiliated with participating organizations will have full access to Frontiers’ Open Science tools, including collaborative peer-review, article and author impact metrics, and enhanced dissemination tools such as Loop.

All submitted articles will remain subject to Frontiers’ editorial processes, policies and conditions including rigorous peer review, and all accepted articles will be published under an open license (CC-BY) that allows authors (or their institutions) to retain copyright.

The research organizations also benefit from transparent and comprehensive reporting provided by Frontiers on expenditures as well as research output at the institutional and national level. The full agreement terms will be made public shortly on Jisc Licence subscriptions manager.

This article was first published 26 November 2019 by Frontiers.