- 12/2021
The Microbiology Society and the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL) are pleased to announce a three-year transformative agreement starting in 2022. The Publish and Read model will enable researchers of 86 Max Planck Institutes in Germany to publish any article accepted for publication in the journals of the Society open access, without having to pay Article Processing Charges (APCs). Through the agreement, MPDL will cover costs of open access publishing of articles in both fully open access and hybrid journals, allowing scientists to retain copyright and secure the broadest possible readership for their work.
Ralf Schimmer, Head of Information at MPDL, said: “Showing a clear commitment to an open, transparent, and sustainable scholarly communication environment, the Microbiology Society is one of the pioneers in the transition of paywall-based scholarly publishing to open access. We are delighted to enter into this agreement, marking a further step in the Max Planck Society’s strategy to enable open dissemination of research, in line with the principles of the OA2020 Initiative and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access”
Peter Cotgreave, Chief Executive of the Microbiology Society: “Our focus at the Society has always been publishing for the community. As a small publishing society, we are delighted to work with the Max Planck Digital Library to help increase the amount of microbiology papers that we publish OA in our journals, to enable researchers a simple and cost-effective means to publish compliantly, and to improve societal access to – and therefore benefit of – the science we publish.”
The agreement marks a significant milestone in the Microbiology Society’s transformation strategy. The number of institutions worldwide under the Society’s Publish and Read agreements has more than doubled year on year since 2020, paving the way towards an Open Access future.
Member institutions (affiliated authors can check their availability here) are offered:
- Unlimited Open Access: any article published in Society journals where the corresponding author is from a Publish and Read institution will be Open Access by default.
- Unlimited usage: any user associated with a Publish and Read institution can access the entire archive of Society content, back to 1947, for reading and for text and data mining.
The Publish and Read agreement covers unlimited reading access and provides uncapped publishing rights without author-facing charges across all the Society’s six journals including hybrid title Microbiology, Journal of General Virology, Journal of Medical Microbiology, International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology, and fully OA titles Access Microbiology, Microbial Genomics.
The Max Planck Society is Germany's premier research organization. Since its establishment in 1948, over 20 Nobel laureates have emerged from the ranks of its scientists, placing it on a par with the best and most prestigious research institutions worldwide. The more than 15,000 publications each year in internationally renowned scientific journals are testimony of the outstanding research work conducted at Max Planck Institutes.
The Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL) is a central scientific service unit within the Max Planck Society dedicated to the strategic planning, development and operation of the digital infrastructures necessary for providing its institutes and their scholars and scientists with research information, support for web-based scholarly communication, research tools and research data management and software licensing.
ABOUT THE MICROBIOLOGY SOCIETY
The Microbiology Society is a membership charity for scientists interested in microbes, their effects and their practical uses. It is one of the largest microbiology societies in Europe with a worldwide membership based in universities, industry, hospitals, research institutes and schools.
Our principal goal is to develop, expand and strengthen the networks available to our members so that they can generate new knowledge about microbes and ensure that it is shared with other communities. The impacts from this will drive us towards a world in which the science of microbiology provides maximum benefit to society.
Microbiology Society contact
Jade Heyman, Journal Sales and Transformation Manager
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Max Planck Digital Library contact
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