Frontiers and the University of Kansas announce 'flat-fee' publishing partnership
The University of Kansas Libraries have negotiated a flat-fee partnership agreement with gold open access publisher Frontiers, giving KU-affiliated researchers even more options for sharing their work openly, starting in January 2024. The partnership marks Frontiers' second flat-fee agreement in North America and is the first to include the publisher's entire portfolio of journals.
Link: Frontiers Science News Announcement
Under the one-year agreement, corresponding authors affiliated with the University of Kansas’ Lawrence and Edwards campuses, will receive unlimited publishing across all 223 Frontiers journals without charge to the researcher.
“KU Libraries is committed to meeting the needs of KU researchers by leading efforts that move scholarly publishing toward a more open, sustainable future,” said Scott Hanrath, KU Libraries associate dean of research engagement. “Our agreement with Frontiers will make it easier and more affordable for KU-affiliated researchers to publish their work in open access journals.”
The agreement follows the announcement in August 2023 of Frontiers' first 'flat-fee' partnership with California Digital Library (CDL), University of California (UC) which includes 19 Frontiers journals selected by CDL from Frontiers Humanities and Social Sciences and Sustainability portfolios.
"It is our pleasure to welcome the University of Kansas to our family of over 700 institutional partners and to celebrate this agreement which, for the first time under our new 'flat-fee' model, covers publishing in all Frontiers’ journals," Ronald Buitenhuis, Frontiers' head of institutional partnerships, said. “The partnership marks a new chapter for KU affiliated researchers who will now benefit from publishing in all Frontiers fully open access journals without charge to the researcher.”
Open access refers to scholarly literature that is digital, online, free of charge and free of most copyright and reuse restrictions. Historically, readers have had to pay subscription fees to access material in a subscription model. With the open access model, readers can access articles regardless of whether they’re subscribed to journals. Authors often pay article processing charges (APCs) to make open access possible, although not all open access journals rely on APCs. In this instance, those APCs are covered in the flat fee agreement.
In its announcement release Frontiers, which is the third-most cited and sixth-largest research publisher, stated, “These partnerships support the goal, shared by those committed to open science, to shift the paradigm away from traditional subscriptions, transformative read and publish models, and APC driven agreements. Created in collaboration with our institutional partners, the flat-fee model is a natural progression towards this goal and will contribute to improved transparency and reduced administrative effort in the publishing market.”
In pursuit of sustainable scholarship, KU Libraries has renegotiated existing publishing agreements and started new ones that either eliminate APCs completely or discount them for eligible authors. Frontiers joins a growing list of publishing partners, including: Association for Computing Machinery, Cambridge University Press, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, The Company of Biologists, The Electrochemical Society, Elsevier, MDPI, PeerJ, PLOS and Taylor & Francis.
Additionally, since 2012 the KU One-University Open Access Publishing Fund has provided funding support for KU authors publishing in open access journals through a pilot project co-managed by KU Medical Center and KU Lawrence librarians and funded by the Provost’s Office and Office of Research. KU Libraries also supports the open sharing of research through the KU ScholarWorks institutional repository, hosts peer-reviewed online open access journals through Journals@KU, and offers a variety of scholarly communication services.