Tulane authors can publish free in Royal Society journals: the Libraries' newest transformative agreement

Continuing its push to support scholarly publishing and make published research more accessible, Tulane University Libraries (TUL) has entered into a transformative open-access agreement with the Royal Society.  This effectively waives the article publication charges for Tulane authors who want their articles to be published as open-access or publicly available in the Society’s journals.

The Royal Society is a fellowship of many of the world's most eminent scientists and is the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence. Since the first issue of Philosophical Transactions in 1665, publishing has been at the heart of the Royal Society’s mission, and today, it publishes ten hybrid and open-access journals that are committed to broad coverage of all science, and specialize in publishing cross-disciplinary research and the proceedings of the Society's scientific meetings.

These highly respected titles include Biology Letters, Interface Focus, Journal of the Royal Society Interface, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Proceedings of the Royal Society A, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Open Biology, and Royal Society Open Science.

The agreement is for three years, begins this month, and there is no annual cap or limit on the number of Tulane-authored articles that are covered. Tulane authors wishing to take advantage of the agreement can find more information at https://royalsociety.org/journals/authors/read-and-publish/.

Tulane University Libraries has negotiated similar agreements with other major publishers, including Elsevier, Wiley, Springer, the American Chemical Society, Cambridge University Press, and Oxford University Press.

Publishing open access in traditional subscription-based journals such as those covered by this and our other transformative agreements allows Tulane authors to continue to publish in high-impact, highly respected titles but in a more widely accessible way. It has added importance because guidelines from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy now call for the results of all federally funded research to be freely available without paywalls. For information about each of Tulane University Libraries’ transformative agreements with journal publishers, see https://libguides.tulane.edu/apc_waivers.