PeerJ attracts new investment

SAGE and O'Reilly have invested an undisclosed amount in the young open-access publisher PeerJ.

These investments are part of a second round of funding that PeerJ has attracted to further develop its business model. Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, and David McCune, who is a non-executive director of SAGE and stepson of SAGE's founder, join PeerJ founders Jason Hoyt and Peter Binfield on the PeerJ board.

'With the additional capital from this round we will be able to further develop our offering, as well as promote ourselves much more broadly to the wider academic community,' commented Hoyt.

David Ross, SAGE's executive publisher of open access told Research Information: 'It's an investment in an innovative publishing model. As a social science publisher we are trying to think how OA can be expanded. SAGE as a business has no direct involvement in PeerJ, apart from David McCune being on the board, but it is an advantage to us to be investing in a new model and it fosters a closer relationship.'

SAGE is not the first traditionally subcription publisher to invest in an OA business. For example, in recent years Nature Publishing Group has invested in Frontiers, De Gruyter has purchased Versita and Springer has purchased Bio Med Central. SAGE also had an OA publishing joint venture with Hindawi Publishing between 2007 and 2011.