AIMs: celebrating our first year, and our 24 partners

It’s been an exciting year since we launched Annual Institutional Memberships (AIMs), and we are thrilled to share our progress to-date. Over the past 12 months, 24 institutions from have joined us in our mission to remove barriers to Open Access and make a more sustainable open future.

What is AIMs?

The AIMs model was designed with simplicity and efficiency in mind. By partnering with institutions, we enable authors to publish in PeerJ journals without having to worry about paying an APC. By eliminating financial barriers for authors, whilst easing the administrative burden of APCs, the model will help widen adoption of Open Access and, therefore, the dissemination of knowledge.

“The fact that my uni is a PeerJ member is great. I always want to choose OA, but there have been times when I can’t afford the APC. When I found out I could publish in PeerJ without having to pay, it was a no-brainer.” – a happy AIMs author.

For our library partners, a single annual payment covers all publication fees, reducing the need for constant fund monitoring and individual transaction approvals; the flexibility of AIMs, however, means that institutions can choose to manually approve requests (either for all submissions or meeting specific criteria) if they prefer. To further enhance the experience for our members, we’ve developed a new dashboard that provides insights on Membership usage. We’re currently building automated projections of renewal fees, allowing institutions to effectively manage their budget and plan for the future.

AIMs ensures that the Membership fee is always a worthwhile investment. If, after 12 months, the membership fee proved to be more expensive than the equivalent APCs, the member can convert the difference into a discount on their renewal, guaranteeing that the cost of an AIM is never more than it would have been for APCs.

As one partner writes:

“Our Institutional Membership works well for us for a few reasons: it allows us to predictably plan our expenses for the year, doesn’t require us to closely monitor funds, and doesn’t create a situation where we may have to tell authors that the funds are already spent. This helps us promote Open Access publishing because we can confidently tell all our authors that they can publish in PeerJ journals at no cost to them.”- Colleen Lyon, Head of Scholarly Communications, University of Texas Libraries.

Looking Ahead

As we celebrate this milestone, we remain committed to supporting our institutional partners and expanding the reach of Open Access publishing. We look forward to welcoming more members into the AIMs program and continuing to innovate in ways that make publishing as seamless and accessible as possible. If you’re interested in becoming a PeerJ Institutional Member, just drop us an email asking to find out more.

Thank you to all our partners for their trust and support. Here’s to many more years of successful collaboration!

We are proud to partner with the following institutions that have embraced the AIMs model:

– Bath University

– University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center and University of Oklahoma, Norman

– University of Texas at Austin

– Arizona State University

– University of Ottawa

– Northumbria University

– Imperial College London

– Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo

– University of Kansas

– Iowa State University

– Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences

– Sussex University

– Virginia Tech

– Duke University

– University of Tennessee, Knoxville

– University of Western Ontario

– Oregon State University

– Memorial University

– Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas

– University of Massachusetts, Amherst

– Lane Medical Library, Stanford University School of Medicine

– Carnegie Mellon University

– Trinity University, Texas