Jisc Collections has reached an agreement with open access publisher MDPI through which UK institutions can benefit from access to article processing charge (APC) discounts and streamlined payment workflows.

The largest native open access publisher in the UK, MDPI, is a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) and aligns with open access mandates, including Plan S requirements on price transparency.

With almost a third of UK articles published in fully open access journals and annual increases reported by the Wellcome Trust, national agreements with open access publishers are increasingly important to universities.

Suzanne Atkins, open access and research publications adviser at the University of Birmingham, says:

“We’ve noticed an increase in MDPI publications in our open access data in the past couple of years. Deals like this, that reduce the number of individual invoice payments, can help to improve workflow efficiencies for open access teams.”

The agreement includes a discount on article processing charges (APCs), flexible invoicing, payment options, and simplified workflows and reporting via MDPI’s submission system. MDPI articles are published under the CC-BY licence and can be supplied directly to institutional repositories as part of the Jisc Publications Router service.

Pablo Velazquez, head of the institutional open access progamme at MDPI, comments:

“We are very pleased to have reached this agreement, which will simplify administrative and invoicing processes for UK institutions while at the same time making open access publishing in MDPI more accessible to their authors.”

The agreement, which reflects Jisc’s commitment to supporting a diverse scholarly communication ecosystem, is effective from 1 July 2020 to 31 December 2022.

The full agreement terms will be made public shortly on our licence subscriptions manager website.