Vanderbilt University’s Heard Libraries and Taylor & Francis Announce Transformative Agreement to Support Open Access Publishing

Photo: BugsMeanee CC BY-SA-4.0

Partnership Will Also Provide Vanderbilt Researchers With a Significantly Expanded Range of Humanities and Social Sciences Journals.

Vanderbilt University’s Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries and Taylor & Francis, one of the world’s leading academic publishers, have signed a new three-year read-and-publish agreement that expands the breadth of journals available to Vanderbilt researchers and enhances the potential reach and impact of their published work. Under the agreement, corresponding authors based at the university can publish open access (OA) in 2,500 journals—both hybrid and fully OA—from Taylor & Francis and its Routledge imprint.

“This agreement with Taylor & Francis opens exciting new avenues for research at Vanderbilt,” said University Librarian Jon Shaw. “Not only will our scholars be able to access an expanded selection of journals across multiple disciplines, but their own ideas and discoveries will gain broader exposure, too. Publishing open access will enable them to engage more widely with fellow scholars and extend the impact of their work on a global scale.”

As Vanderbilt researchers have increased their publishing activities with Taylor & Francis over the past five years, demand for OA has grown most rapidly among its humanities and social sciences (HSS) journals, where authors typically struggle to find funder support for article publishing charges, or APCs. Through this new agreement, Vanderbilt researchers will benefit from significantly increased access to Taylor & Francis’ leading HSS collection of more than 1,400 titles published by Routledge, as well as journals dedicated to science, engineering, health care and other disciplines.

Jeff Voci, Senior Vice President & Commercial Lead – Americas at Taylor & Francis, said: “We’ve enjoyed working with Vanderbilt University to design a model that meets our shared open priorities and a growing demand for equitable OA publishing support in underfunded areas, while also increasing access to the content faculty and students need.”

Voci added: “As one of the world’s largest humanities and social sciences publishers with a broad cross-disciplinary balance, we have a responsibility to lead open access initiatives in disciplines that are often overlooked and to experiment with models that support all our stakeholders. We’re excited to see the fruit of this partnership in the growth and reach of Vanderbilt research over the coming years.”

Vanderbilt joins more than 700 global institutions partnering with Taylor & Francis through a transformative agreement, including 11 others in the Americas. Researchers in need of assistance should direct questions to Vanderbilt’s subject librarians.

Taylor & Francis is a leading OA publisher, with a program that includes over 300 fully OA journals, including 25 diamond OA titles, more than 2,490 Open Select (hybrid) journals, 1,700+ OA books and a range of F1000 open research platforms in partnership with organizations that include Wellcome and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.