April 14, 2021 - Hoboken, N.J. - John Wiley & Sons, Inc. today announced a new open access agreement with the Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities (Crue Universidades Españolas) and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) to drive an increase in open access publishing among 59 Spanish universities and CSIC, the largest research institution in Spain. Together, Crue-CSIC represent nearly 200,000 researchers across Spain.
This read and publish agreement, initially for one year, is part of a longer partnership between Wiley and Crue-CSIC. The agreement allows researchers at participating institutions to both access Wiley's journals and to publish accepted articles open access in Wiley's hybrid journals, which contain both subscription and open access content. As a result of the agreement, an estimated 70% of articles published by participating institutions in 2021 will be open access, enabling more research from leading Spanish institutions to be read, cited and built upon.
"As open access remains a priority in Europe, Wiley is proud to partner with an ever-growing list of consortia to accelerate the transition to open access," said Judy Verses, Executive Vice President, Wiley Research. "With this agreement, Crue-CSIC researchers will add a substantial number of new open access articles to the scholarly record, broadening the dissemination of key findings and facilitating scientific discovery."
Jesús Marco, CSIC Vice President for Research said: "Wiley is currently for CSIC the second publisher where our researchers publish the most, so having achieved this reading and publication agreement is an important milestone in our strategy of promoting open access as a fundamental pillar for open science at CSIC. This agreement adds to the more than 20 open access agreements that CSIC has with a wide range of scientific publishers in its Open Access Publishing Support Program. Fostering a diverse and plural open access publishing ecosystem is also a goal to be achieved. We are also very pleased to have achieved this in alliance with the Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities."
Prof. Francisco Mora, Vice President of Crue, President of Crue's Open Science Working Group, and rector of the Universitat Politècnica de València, stressed that "this new agreement with Wiley confirms the commitment of Spanish universities to Open Science." Mora expressed his satisfaction with this "new and substantive step towards free access" and stated that "on the road towards a Knowledge Society, it is essential to provide researchers and citizens with unlimited access to scientific publications."
This agreement marks Wiley's thirteenth open access agreement globally and eleventh in Europe, including a groundbreaking agreement with Projekt DEAL in Germany. Just this year, Wiley has announced new agreements with Iowa State University in the United States, the Conference of Italian University Rectors (CRUI) in Italy, and IReL in Ireland, as well as the strategic acquisition of Hindawi Limited, an innovator and fully open access publisher.
