Routes to publish with the Society: our Open Access journey

30 April 2024

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The Microbiology Society is a membership charity and not-for-profit publisher. Submissions to our titles support the entire community – ensuring that we continue to provide events, grants and professional development for microbiologists at all career stages. Everything we offer our community happens thanks to the revenue generated by publishing.

We currently publish six titles: Microbiology, Journal of General Virology, Journal of Medical Microbiology, Access Microbiology, Microbial Genomics and the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology.

Open Access (OA)

The world is entering a new era of open science, challenging the status quo by recognising the value of greater transparency, focusing on reproducibility, data management, collaboration and good scientific citizenship. At the Microbiology Society, we embrace these changes and recognise the positive impact they represent for our community and for society’s understanding of the role of science in resolving pressing global challenges.

We have been publishing advances in the field of microbiology for over 75 years and in 2023 our journal Microbiology transitioned to fully OA, establishing our commitment to an open science future. We continue to support our authors with a range of options to publish OA in any of our six titles. The cOAlition S organisations, a group of national research funding organisations with the support of the European Commission and the European Research Council, and other international governmental bodies are increasingly mandating OA publication for funded research. And we are leading the way on this journey.

Below we explain the full and diverse range of options authors and institutions have to publish OA with us and the benefits of each. We aim to be as inclusive as possible to ensure everyone can publish with us and has the best experience when they do so, across our portfolio. We also offer a wide range of support for those new to publishing, including our Publishing Fundamentals programme and Access Microbiology, our open research platform.

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Routes to publish with the Society

S2O

Subscribe to Open (known as ‘S2O’) is an impactful, inclusive, simple and compliant model. It is internationally recognised and provides an equitable and sustainable approach to transitioning subscription-based journals to OA, one year at a time.

It is based on existing subscription processes, where subscriptions enable universal OA publishing without imposing any publication fees on authors.

At the Microbiology Society, our titles the Journal of Medical Microbiology (JMM) and the Journal of General Virology (JGV) will transition to S2O from 1 January 2025.

What does this mean?

Under the S2O model, subscribers to JMM and JGV are offered continued access to their subscribed titles through the standard renewal process, which takes into account a library’s current budgetary commitments. When enough subscriptions are renewed, the journal is moved to OA for that year. This means that the content of that year becomes openly accessible under a Creative Commons license, available for everyone to read, and with no charges for authors.

The following year, subscribers can renew via the normal renewal process. If enough subscribers choose to renew again, the journal maintains its OA status for another year.

Why S2O?

S2O is designed to support the inclusive transition to OA through the regular renewal process with full transparency and no additional costs. The model represents an equitable approach as all authors can publish in the journal of their choice, irrespective of whether their affiliated institution has funding for OA publishing. Under S2O, content is open to both readers and authors alike and the model can support increased usage of Society content worldwide.

Benefits of S2O
  • Authors can publish their articles fully OA, free of charge, eliminating the need for author processing fees (APCs) – ensuring compliance with OA mandates.
  • Libraries retain guaranteed access to our journals JMM and JGV and their archives (subscriber access only).
  • Libraries benefit from reporting on journal usage –
    • By using our S2O model, they support the transition to OA of our journals without any additional cost using the existing renewals process.
    • They are also directly providing wider access to our content, including in regions and disciplines without funding options to access and publish research.

Publish and Read

Publish and Read is our Transformative Agreement model which has been in place since 2020 across our full portfolio, helping institutions to make the transition to an increasingly Open Access (OA) publishing landscape. Publish and Read is designed to provide a frictionless OA experience for authors and maximum value for institutions, with minimum administration. It offers institutions an alternative to both subscriptions and article processing charges (APCs).

Why Publish and Read?

It is a mixed model that allows institutions prepayment of an annual fee for unlimited OA publishing and full access to all paywalled content across the full portfolio of our journals. Corresponding authors from Publish and Read institutions enjoy all the benefits of Open Access without any further payment or administration.

Benefits of Publish and Read

Institutions that sign up for a Publish and Read agreement and their researchers benefit from:

  • Uncapped OA publishing: any article published in Society titles where the corresponding author is from a Publish and Read institution will be OA by default.
  • Unlimited usage: any user associated with a Publish and Read institution can access the entire archive of Society content, back to 1947, for reading and text and data mining.
  • Corresponding authors based at an institution that has signed a Publish and Read deal with the Society can publish OA in any of our journals or our open research platform, as much as they want, without any charges as an author. 
  • Publish and Read is designed to be simple for all involved. Corresponding authors simply submit using their institutional email address. Eligible authors are matched against the list of Publish and Read institutions and the article is routed for the fee-free option. 

Article Processing Charges (APCs)

Authors who wish to publish Gold OA (where the final, published version of your article is permanently and freely available online for anyone to read), but are not at a Publish and Read institution or publishing in one of our S2O journals, may do so by paying an article processing charge (APC). More information can be found at:
https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/publishing-costs

Inclusivity

At the Society, we acknowledge that not all authors receive financial support to publish their work Open Access.

We are pleased to participate in the HINARI programme (part of Research4Life), meaning that corresponding authors in Group A or B countries are automatically entitled to a 100% APC discount in our fully OA journals, which can be applied by authors during the check-out process upon acceptance.

To maintain the sustainability of our publishing programme and hold to our values of equity and inclusivity, we can offer support (including free or highly discounted OA articles) in covering the cost of APCs when an author needs assistance to publish in Microbiology, Microbial Genomics or Access Microbiology. More information can be found at:https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/publishing-costs

Green OA

We encourage authors to deposit the Author-Accepted Manuscript (the accepted version of their manuscript yet to be copyedited or typeset, also known as AAM) in their institutional repository or a recognised subject repository of their choice under a CC-BY licence to comply with the funder and institutional mandates. When depositing their AAM, authors should include an archiving statement on the title page and a link to the final published article, known as the Version of Record. You can find more information on this and the archiving statement at:
https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/routes-to-open-access

Help and resources

Getting Started: Publishing Fundamentals

At the Microbiology Society, we offer a range of routes to support anyone starting their publishing journey via our Publishing Fundamentals programme. Which includes online resources and events to guide those new to publishing, reviewing and editing through the process of academic publishing. More information can be found at:
https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/publishing-fundamentals

Beyond the research paper

We can help with the publication of magazine-style and other content beyond a typical research article. Via our journals platform, we publish ‘Micro Perspectives’, a home for our community to provide opinions, views and authoritative perspectives on work published in our journals. Via our popular blog, we publish ‘Micro Scopes’, where authors take us behind their research to explain the story of their science. We welcome submissions from across our global author community – get in touch to learn more.
https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/micro-perspectives

Access Microbiology

As a sound science open research platform, Access Microbiology offers a service for members of our community to disseminate their work rapidly, transparently and rigorously. It supports the publication of replication studies, negative or null results, research proposals, data management plans, additions to established methods, case reports, software development, educational and outreach methods, and interdisciplinary work. We welcome work from all branches of microbiology and virology. More information can be found at:
https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/journal/acmi

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