Jisc Negotiates Transformative Agreement with NAS

Information Industry News

Bristol, UK | July 7, 2021

Jisc, the not-for-profit technology provider for education and research and the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (NAS) are pleased to announce a two-year transformational open access (OA) pilot agreement. The ‘Publish and Read’ deal will allow UK corresponding authors at participating institutions to publish OA articles in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) without incurring any publication charges. Researchers at participating Jisc institutions will be able to access all PNAS content, dating back to 1915, for free.

The Jisc consortium, which consists of 156 UK universities, is the first national consortium to strike a transformational deal with the NAS.

Caren Milloy, director of licensing at Jisc, says: “We are delighted to have secured an agreement with PNAS that reduces costs for our members and provides Plan S compliant open access publishing whilst giving them access to their journal. The agreement is further evidence of Jisc’s commitment to supporting society publishers in the transition to open access.” 

Ken Fulton, PNAS publisher and NAS executive director, says, “We are very pleased to have reached this pilot agreement with Jisc, which ensures that authors from UK universities have a Plan S–compliant route to open access publishing in PNAS. We look forward to analysing data from this pilot as we explore open access business models. We are also excited to launch our fully open access journal, PNAS Nexus, in 2022.”

The two-year pilot agreement, which runs from July 2021 until June 2023, enables immediate OA for UK higher education institutions and research organisations that opt in. Based on recent publishing data the deal will comfortably cover 100% UK output.   

Jisc Collections has already successfully negotiated similar deals with 15 small society publishers including the Microbiology Society, The Royal Society, and Portland Press 

  
 

About These Organizations

About Jisc
Jisc’s vision is for the UK to be the most digitally advanced education and research nation in the world. At its heart is the super-fast national research and education network, Janet, with built-in cyber security protection.  Jisc also provides technology solutions for its members (colleges, universities and research centres) and customers (public sector bodies), helps members save time and money by negotiating sector-wide deals and provides advice and practical assistance on digital technology. Jisc is funded by the UK higher and further education and research funding bodies and member institutions.

About PNAS

PNAS is one of the world's most widely cited and comprehensive multidisciplinary scientific journals, publishing more than 3,500 research papers annually. As the official journal of the NAS, PNAS is an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans the Biological, Physical, and Social Sciences. The journal is global in scope, and submission is open to all researchers worldwide. Since its establishment in 1914, PNAS has worked to publish high-quality scientific research and to make that research accessible to a broad audience. 

For more information, contact faye.holst@jisc.ac.uk, or call 07443 983571. You may also contact the PNAS News Office at PNASNews@nas.edu.