13 January 2020
Karger Publishers continues to work actively toward a transition to open access, including plans to flip, or convert, more journals from the subscription model to OA. Five journals – Lifestyle Genomics, Gastrointestinal Tumors, Liver Cancer, Inflammatory Intestinal Diseases, and Kidney Diseases – have flipped to OA, increasing the number of Karger’s OA publications to 30 out of more than 100 journals.
The publisher has also reached several transformative OA agreements:
- In the Czech Republic, Karger Publishers secured its first Eastern European publish-and-access deal with two members of the Czech library consortium ELib: Masarykova Univerzita (Masaryk University) and Univerzita Karlova (Charles University). This includes access to all Karger e-journals and the option for all researchers affiliated with the two institutes to publish OA in Karger journals at no additional cost.
- Another agreement with a German consortium also enables affiliated authors to access all Karger e-journals and publish OA in Karger subscription journals at no additional cost. Fifteen German universities have already taken up the publish-and-access offer.
- Karger Publishers provides a similar model to the Consortium of Swiss Academic Libraries (CSAL). Four Swiss universities have joined the publish-and-access deal so far.
Karger Publishers has also introduced a discount and waiver policy for OA journals based on country income. The offer allows authors from low- to middle-income countries to publish free of charge or with a discount on article processing charges (APCs). This follows the launch in 2019 of a progressive policy regarding preprint publication.
Karger Publishers is plans to flip several journals in 2021 and more in the following years, and is evaluating additional open policies and services.