University of Ottawa signs agreement with PeerJ for innovative new Institutional Author Membership model to fund Open Access

New three year PeerJ Memberships allows more flexibility for University of Ottawa researchers to choose when they publish.

We are delighted to announce that University of Ottawa have signed up to an innovative new approach to fund Open Access publishing. Funded by the University of Ottawa Library, authors affiliated with the University of Ottawa may publish in PeerJ journals using a new Three-Year Membership; the Membership allows authors to publish up to three articles at any time within a three-year period.

“PeerJ are thrilled that University of Ottawa will become the first institution to benefit from this new Institutional Membership package. As a University Library, Ottawa has always been at the forefront of Open Access innovation and therefore we are delighted that they see this new approach as beneficial to their researchers, and a cost-effective approach to Open Access” said Nathaniel Gore, Director of Communities at PeerJ.

“The University of Ottawa Library is pleased to continue to offer our affiliated authors a membership option to publish with PeerJ. We are committed to exploring economic models of open access publishing beyond the article processing charge, and PeerJ offers us the opportunity to do this,” said Jeanette Hatherill​, Scholarly Communication Librarian, University of Ottawa.

Under the agreement, Three-Year Memberships – priced at $239 per author – are valid from the date of first publication and for a further 36 months, during which authors can publish up to two further articles. This could mean that an author can publish all 3 articles in one year, having only paid $239 (for that individual, other co-authors notwithstanding). This provides authors with more flexibility as to when they publish during their membership term.

An “average” PeerJ article has 4.5 authors. With this new agreement, if all the co-authors are from University of Ottawa and each co-author publishes their full complement of 3 papers in 3 years with the same set of co-authors, then the price per “average” publication would be just $384 per publication; of course the price could be as little as $79.66 (for three single author papers).

“PeerJ remains committed to Memberships as the low-cost, sustainable alternative to Article Processing Charges (APCs)” says PeerJ CEO and Co-Founder Jason Hoyt. “Whilst we introduced APCs to meet user demand – partly due to the inflexibility of many research grants – we still believe that both our Institutional Fixed Term Membership and Lifetime Personal Membership options provide the best value for money to the communities who choose to publish with us.”

For a publication to be funded via memberships, all co-authors on a paper must have a valid membership. In the case of University of Ottawa, all non-affiliated authors need to obtain their own memberships as per PeerJ’s prevailing model and pricing. Any University of Ottawa users who hold lifetime memberships are unaffected by this new agreement; their lifetime memberships remain valid and allow them to publish one PeerJ article every year at no additional cost.

PeerJ will be announcing more agreements as part of a multi-year trial based on the Institutional Fixed Term Membership model in the coming weeks. If you would like your institution to be considered for the trial, please contact PeerJ.