Read & Publish Agreements Negotiated by CAUL

This agreement commenced in January 2022.

The Company of Biologists is a not-for-profit publishing organisation with a mission to support biologists and inspire biology worldwide.  

We have a long-standing commitment to Open Access as we believe it benefits science. We also have a track record of innovation. 

Our hybrid journals – Development, Journal of Cell Science and Journal of Experimental Biology – were the first journals in the world from any publisher to be afforded Transformative Journal status by Plan S. We were also one of the first not-for-profit publishers to launch a Read & Publish initiative and are delighted by the very positive response we have received from librarians and researchers internationally. 

Libraries can also choose to include our two fully Open Access journals – Disease Models & Mechanisms and Biology Open – in their Read & Publish agreement.

Further information is available on the The Company of Biologists' CAUL agreement site.

This page was lasted updated on 19 January 2023.

Authors who do not see their institution listed above should contact library staff to enquire further. 

This agreement allows authors from participating institutions to publish open access in three or five titles with no transactional APCs.  

Three Journal Package: 

• Development  

• Journal of Cell Science 

• Journal of Experimental Biology 

Five Journal Package:

• Development  

• Journal of Cell Science 

• Journal of Experimental Biology 

• Disease Models and Mechanisms 

• Biology Open 

Please see the Alphabetical title list for The Company of Biologist titles and all titles from all other CAUL agreements.

Open access publishing covered under this Read & Publish agreement includes the following article types: 

• Original research paper article 

Authors may publish excluded article types as “closed access” or pay an article processing charge (if applicable) to make the article open access. 

Eligible articles that have an acceptance date during the term of this agreement are eligible to be published open access under the terms of the agreement. 

There is no limit on the number of articles by eligible authors from participating institutions that can be published under the terms of this agreement. 

There are no other transactional charges for authors. 

Please note: For articles to be published open access under the terms of this agreement, responsible corresponding authors must

• select a participating institution as their affiliation in the publisher system
• use an institutional email address for a participating institution (see Participating institutions list above) when submitting their article.

Responsible corresponding authors should not use personal email addresses (e.g. Hotmail, Gmail). Doing so may result in delayed approval of the article or the article may not be approved to be published open access under the terms of the agreement. 

Responsible corresponding authors from institutions listed under 'Participating institutions' above may publish immediately to open access on the publisher's platform once the article has been accepted with no transactional APCs. (Page and colour charges may apply.)

Articles from authors at participating institutions may be published under the authors' choice of either 

• CC-BY 

• CC-BY-SA 

• CC-BY-ND 

• CC-BY-NC 

• CC-BY-NC-SA 

• CC-BY-NC-ND

The Creative Commons licenses allow reuse (some with conditions) while protecting the authors' rights of acknowledgment as authors. Authors retain copyright. 

1. Follow the publisher's usual article submission process via the journal’s homepage.
2. On acceptance of the article, the publisher will ask the corresponding author to complete a form (publishing agreement). 
3. The corresponding author selects open access and confirms the licence type (e.g. CC-BY). 
4. The APC is automatically waived for authors who have used an institutional email address belonging to one of the participating institutions and indicated they are affiliated with a participating institution. 

View the publisher’s step-by-step guide for authors. 

Authors will be identified as eligible for open access publishing by their  

• email address 

• institutional affiliation 

• IP address range. 

Authors must use their institutional email address when submitting an article for publication in order for the publication to be approved to be published open access with no transactional APCs 

The license is available for download from ConsortiaManager. Library staff should contact the designated Content Coordinator at their institution regarding any license enquiries. 

Authors may deposit articles in institutional repositories. 

Preprints may be deposited. The Company of Biologists recognises the growing use of preprint servers in the biological sciences, and appreciates the value in rapid dissemination of research results. Deposition of primary research manuscripts on community preprint servers such as bioRxiv is not considered prior publication and will not compromise potential publication. Authors are asked to provide details of the preprint deposition in the cover letter accompanying manuscript submission. Versions of a manuscript that have been revised in response to peer review comments should not be deposited. Authors who have posted their paper to a preprint server are welcome to engage in community discussion about their paper. 

• Author accepted manuscripts may be made available via institutional repositories after a zero months embargo period. 

The publisher will supply CAUL Procurement Services and participating institutions with reports on publishing output with article-level information on a six-month basis.