Swedish consortium agrees 'read and publish' deal with CUP

A Swedish research and higher education consortium has agreed a 'read and publish' open access deal with Cambridge University Press (CUP).

Bibsam – a consortium of 85 higher education and research institutions, led by the National Library of Sweden – agreed the three-year deal, which pays for the institution to access the publisher’s journals and also cover the article processing charges that authors would normally pay to publish their work on an open-access basis with that publisher.

Accordingly, authors from institutions affiliated to Bibsam can publish their publicly-financed research articles in the CUP's hybrid and fully open access journals. It also gives Bibsam members full access to the CUP's full collection of nearly 400 journals across STM and HSS from the beginning of 2019.

This latest deal follows another 'read and publish' agreement between CUP and the UKB consortium of 13 Dutch university libraries in May 2017.

Chris Bennett, global sales director for academic publishing at CUP, said: 'We are delighted to have reached this agreement with Bibsam. It is a further, clear demonstration of our determination to be at the forefront of building a sustainable, responsible transition to full open access on behalf of our authors, their institutions and those who fund them. We recognise and support wholeheartedly the benefits to global research of doing so.'

Anna Lundén, head of division for national coordination of libraries at the National Library of Sweden, said: ‘We appreciate that the agreement with Cambridge University Press continues the transformation to “Read and Publish” for participating organisations in the Bibsam Consortium. The agreement gives researchers affiliated to an organisation part of the consortium unlimited open access publishing of articles in both pure open access and hybrid journals without any additional costs which is an important milestone.’

Mandy Hill, managing director of academic publishing at CUP, concluded: ‘This read and publish deal with Bibsam also supports our wider ambitions and our long-term commitment to open research – making scholarly publishing more accessible, while ensuring sustainability and quality for the academic community.’