New open access agreement agreed at Max Planck Institute

The Max Planck Library and Taylor & Francis group have signed a new arrangement for researchers based there to publish in more than 2000 open access journals.

This will apply to peer-reviewed papers in full and hybrid Taylor & Francis Group journals such as Routledge and Cogent OA titles.  Individuals will no longer pay article publishing charges usually applicable for open access publication.

Dr Ralf Schimmer, head of information at the Max Planck Digital Library, said: “This new agreement is constructed from an open access perspective and helped us to revitalize our business relations after several years of no central site license for the Max Planck Society.

“We are particularly pleased that our new collaboration marks a departure from the subscription system and shifts our fees from read access to our publication output. This constitutes a significant service improvement for our authors and underscores the transformation to open access.”

The Max Planck Institutes will also have shared access to a set of Taylor & Francis subscription journals and can swap and add individual titles up to an agreed limit to meet reader demand. Payments made by the Max Planck Digital Library will occur over three years to reflect the number of Max Planck researchers publishing in Taylor & Francis journals.

Deborah Kahn, publishing director at Taylor & Francis Group, said: “The Max Planck Society, a leader in many research fields, has also led the way in establishing Open Access as a flexible and high?quality scholarly and scientific publishing system ever since they organised the first Berlin Conference in 2003. We are therefore delighted to be partnering with Max Planck Digital Library to facilitate all Max Planck researchers being able to publish Open Access in all of our Cogent, Taylor & Francis Open and Open Select journals, as well as providing them easy and unrestricted access to many of our leading titles.”