Max Planck Authors Can Now Publish For Free In PeerJ

PeerJ is pleased to announce that the Max Planck Society has signed a publishing plan deal with PeerJ, which entitles any Max Planck author to publish their research in PeerJ at no cost to themselves.

With this announcement, thousands of authors in over 80 Max Planck institutes now have the ability to publish their peer-reviewed articles in PeerJ without needing to pay a fee. This publishing plan enables Max Planck to automatically purchase ‘Enhanced Plans’ for accepted authors, meaning that those individuals will benefit from the ability to publish freely for life with PeerJ thereafter (at the level of 2 articles per year).

Kai Geschuhn from the Max Planck Digital Library[1] said “With PeerJ we are expanding our portfolio of central Open Access agreements to include a publisher striking a new path in peer review. At the same time, PeerJ represents a new Open Access business model offering a high quality publishing platform at minimum cost“.

“We are pleased to see the commitment of a major research organization like Max Planck to the PeerJ model,” adds our co-founder Pete Binfield, “Open Access publications are more visible and help fulfil the desire of funders to disseminate their output as widely as possible. As such, PeerJ represents one of the most cost-effective ways for a funder to help their authors to publish in a high quality open access venue.”

Making its scientists’ research findings available for the benefit of the whole of humanity, free of charge whenever possible, is a key aspiration of the Max Planck Society. The Society joins over 40 universities world-wide, such as Stanford, Berkeley, Cambridge, Duke, Amsterdam, and University College London who have already made funds available for their faculty to take advantage of PeerJ memberships.

PeerJ emphasizes research integrity; high ethical standards; constructive peer-review; exemplary production quality; and leading edge online functionality. The journal is indexed by PubMed, PubMed Central (PMC), Scopus and Google Scholar. There is an Editorial Board of over 860 world class researchers, and a 20-member Advisory Board which includes 5 Nobel Laureates. In addition, PeerJ authors benefit from the ability to publish unlimited articles in PeerJ PrePrints.

Any Institution, Library, Consortia, Society, Foundation or Funding Body interested in discussing one of these arrangements can find out more here.

[1] The Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL) in Munich is a central unit of the Max Planck Society that supports scientists from all Max Planck Institutes with a broad portfolio of services in the fields of information provision, publication support and research data management. www.mpdl.mpg.de