Royal Society enters new transformative agreement with Max Planck Society

The Royal Society has signed a pilot agreement with Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL) to enable open access publishing across the entire Royal Society journal portfolio, at no cost to authors of the Max Planck Society.

The future-oriented Publish and Read agreement builds on the foundations of the central agreement that already covers publishing for MPG authors in the fully open access journals Open Biology and Royal Society Open Science.  Through this new, 3-year agreement, articles by Max Planck researchers accepted for publication in any Royal Society journal will be made open access and the relative publishing fees will be covered by the Max Planck Digital Library. Max Planck researchers also gain full access to the complete Royal Society journal portfolio, from its first publications in 1665 to date, significantly increasing their access to scientific papers in all disciplines.

Publishing Director at the Royal Society, Dr Stuart Taylor, said: “We are excited about this new partnership with such a prestigious research organisation as the Max Planck Gesellschaft which will support the needs of their researchers and take us a step closer to our goal of a sustainable open access future for our journals.”

Graham Anderson, Royal Society Global Sales Manager, said: “I am pleased that we will be able to work with MPDL on a Transformational Agreement model that suits their needs. MPDL researchers have a strong history of publishing with the Royal Society and this new agreement will streamline the publishing process for researchers using our existing workflows. This pilot is a significant step in our ongoing support for OA publishing.”

Dr Ralf Schimmer, Head of Information Provision at the Max Planck Digital Library, said: “Learned societies play an essential role in the production and dissemination of knowledge, and we are delighted that many of them are taking steps to transition their journals to open access for the benefit of research. We are extremely happy about this new collaboration with The Royal Society and commend their commitment and willingness to explore a new open publishing model under the framework of this agreement, which is a further, significant milestone in the Max Planck Society’s Open Access transformation strategy, in line with the OA2020 Initiative.”

Find further information on our Read and Publish agreement here.