New BMJ ‘Publish and Read’ agreement supports open access publishing in Ireland

Corporate announcement

BMJ enhances long-standing partnership with IReL to provide Irish member institutions and research bodies the opportunity to publish open access in BMJ Journals.

Today, BMJ and IReL announce the expansion of an existing partnership to a ‘Publish and Read’ agreement. Over the next three years, the agreement will grant full read access to 28 specialist journals from BMJ‘s journal portfolio. Researchers at member institutions will also benefit from BMJ making all associated research publications immediately available through their open access model at no added cost to the author.

This new ‘Publish and Read’ agreement between BMJ and IReL, creates the foundation to support and encourage a future where open access publishing can occur across the Irish member institutions and research bodies.

Dr Allison Lang, Publishing Director at BMJ, said, “This extension to our existing partnership, gives institutions and researchers across Ireland the support where they need it most. Providing all member institutions in Ireland with the best available publishing opportunities helps us at BMJ to further cement our vision of helping to create a healthier world.”

Jack Hyland, IReL’s manager said: “The covid-19 pandemic has shown the importance of medical research being immediately openly available on publication. The Publish and Read Pilot agreement extension with BMJ is a major step towards making Irish researchers’ contributions open access by default.”

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About open access at BMJ

BMJ is a champion of open access as a way to promote knowledge and accelerate discoveries. The global healthcare knowledge provider places a great deal of importance on increasing the reach and use of what it publishes and actively reshapes the way medical research is conducted and disseminated.

The research in BMJ’s flagship journal, The BMJ, has always been free to read, and in 2011 the organisation launched its first and largest open access medical journal, BMJ Open.

Today, a third of BMJ’s journals are fully open access. They also make academic research freely accessible and discoverable with Transformative Journals and hybrid publication models. 

About IReL  

IReL is a nationally-funded e-resource licensing consortium providing access to leading online resources on behalf of participating Irish publicly funded higher education institutions. IReL delivers access to quality peer-reviewed online research publications: journals, ebooks, databases and index & abstracting services. See the resources page for a complete listing.