February 24, 2021 - Hoboken, N.J. - John Wiley & Sons, Inc. today announced a new four-year open access agreement with the Conference of Italian University Rectors (CRUI) to accelerate open access publishing among a growing list of more than 65 universities across Italy.
The read and publish agreement allows members of the Conference access to Wiley's subscription journals and grants researchers at participating Italian institutions the ability to publish accepted articles open access in Wiley's hybrid journals for one annual fee. The structure of this agreement allows for a staggered shift towards OA publishing. Starting this year, thousands of the articles published by CRUI University researchers in Wiley journals will be made open access.
"Open access remains an important priority for the global research community. We are pleased to work with CRUI to deliver this agreement that directly serves the needs of their leading universities, researchers, and students across Italy," said Judy Verses, Executive Vice President, Wiley Research. "This multi-year agreement reinforces Wiley's commitment to expanding our open access offerings."
By accelerating the publication of open access articles in Italy through this agreement, researchers from universities of all sizes and a wide variety of fields will be able to publish open access in Wiley's journals without direct cost to themselves.
"The CRUI has been committed to promoting open access since 2004 and since 2019 has started to sign agreements with international publishers to turn 'read only' contracts into 'read and publish' ones," said Stefano Ruffo, Rector at SISSA and CRUI's Commission for Libraries Coordinator. "This is why our cooperation with Wiley represents such an important step ahead. Being able to publish with no direct costs provides our researchers with a substantial tool to share their results and contribute to the advancement of knowledge."
As the demand for open access publishing continues to grow globally, this agreement marks Wiley's tenth open access agreement, and comes on the heels of the company acquiring Hindawi Limited, an innovator and fully open access publisher, last month.
