Annual Institutional Memberships – a new model to move Open Access beyond the APC and towards collective action to support globally equitable access

Today we announce a new membership model – and our first partner – which will move Open Access beyond the Article Processing Charge in a step towards our goal of collective action to support globally equitable access.

We are excited to announce the launch of a brand new Open Access model for PeerJ, as well as our first institutional partner: the University of Bath. This new model is an important step towards our ultimate goal of achieving globally equitable access to Open Access publishing and moving beyond the APC.

Our new Annual Institutional Memberships (AIMs) are designed to remove payment barriers for authors and reduce the administrative burden associated with Open Access payments, while also providing great value for our institutional partners. The University of Bath will be our first partner under this new program, giving their faculty unlimited publishing for a flat fee.

When we first launched PeerJ, we knew that there were better models for Open Access than the APC, which is why we launched with Personal Lifetime Memberships. A decade ago, we did not believe that the use of APCs to fund Open Access was sustainable, and today they have become less and less equitable. With AIMs, we are taking a big step towards our ultimate goal of achieving globally equitable Open Access, where no author will have to pay an APC to publish.

AIMs are designed to be simple to manage and easy to purchase, with tiered pricing based on an institution’s publishing history in our journal portfolio. When a partner’s renewal is calculated, if the equivalent APC cost would have been less than the Membership fee, they can choose to carry over the difference towards their Membership renewal, or contribute to our Global Publishing Fund, which supports authors without the means to publish OA.

We are confident that AIMs will simplify OA publishing for both researchers and librarians, making it more accessible and affordable. We’re thrilled to partner with the University of Bath on this exciting new initiative, and we’re looking forward to working with more institutions in the future. With pricing starting at just $2000/year, we encourage all institutions seeking fair value Open Access to get in touch – email us today: business@peerj.com