Jisc-PNAS UK Publish and Read Agreement

Michael Bryce
Tuesday 26 October 2021

It’s Open Access Week, and tied with the theme of ‘equity’ in OA publishing the Library and Open Research team are today announcing a new publisher agreement with PNAS – or for those with an aversion to acronyms, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Through the agreement St Andrews corresponding authors will be able to publish their research articles open access with no additional cost, thus reducing barriers to OA publishing.

In the summer Jisc and the National Academy of Sciences agreed a two-year pilot transitional agreement, which was evaluated and implemented by Library and Open Research colleagues for St Andrews researchers. This transitional ‘Publish and Read’ agreement works by converting subscription fees and estimated OA costs to provide read access to all Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) content, including access to the backfiles dating back to 1915, and a capped OA element which provides an Open Access publishing option with no direct cost to authors in participating UK institutions. The cap is expected to cover 100% of UK publications in the pilot period. This is the first time NAS has agreed a deal with a national consortium and marks an important step away from toll access towards Open Access and the principles of Plan S.

Caren Milloy, director of licensing at Jisc, says:

“We are delighted to have secured an agreement with PNAS that reduces costs for our members and provides Plan S compliant open access publishing whilst giving them access to their journal. The agreement is further evidence of Jisc’s commitment to supporting society publishers in the transition to open access.” (JISC)

St Andrews signed up to the agreement on 23rd August, so articles accepted on or after this date can be considered for the OA part of the agreement if the eligibility criteria are met:

  • If you or another St Andrews researcher is corresponding author
  • Article acceptance date is on or after sign up date (23/08/2021)
  • A Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY) is selected
  • Covers Research articles only (inc. Brief Reports)

During the submission process, eligible corresponding authors should be identified as such by PNAS, and notified that no payment is required.

St Andrews corresponding authors must be the primary corresponding author and should contact [email protected] to confirm that there is a St Andrews primary corresponding author if there is any doubt in the case of co-corresponding authors.

For help and support contact [email protected].

Featured image is a detail from Fig. 1. in Steele, MP, Neaves, LE, … & Rutz, C 2021, ‘DNA barcoding identifies cryptic animal tool materials’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 118, no. 29, e2020699118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2020699118

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